

CALVIN WEISS 


LAUFER 


Class. _L_ 

Book_ % 



Copyright k!°_ 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 





































































































































THE 

INCOMPARABLE 

CHRIST 


BY 

CALVIN WEISS LAUFER 



THE ABINGDON PRESS 
NEW YORK CINCINNATI 


.U'iS 


Copyright, 1915, by 
CALVIN WEISS LAUFER 


* < 



APR -6 1915 


©CI.A398232 


TO 

AUGUST KUPKA 
COMRADE, COUNSELOR, FRIEND 







CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 

Preface. 7 

I. The Incomparable Christ. 11 

II. Jesus Christ and the Religious Life 

of Man. 27 

III. Jesus Christ’s Consciousness of Him¬ 

self . 43 

IV. The Incarnation and Its Message 

for Humanity. 61 

V. Jesus the Key to God’s Character. 79 

VI. The Atonement. 93 

VII. Jesus and the Child. 109 

VIII. Jesus Christ and the Castaway. ... 125 

IX. Jesus Christ and the Crowd. 145 

X. Jesus Christ the Burden Bearer. .. 157 

XI. Jesus Christ and the Lesson of 

Solitude . 173 

XII. Jesus Christ’s Spiritual Supremacy. 185 

XIII. The Cross the Spiritual Magnet of 

the World. 197 

XIV. Jesus Christ’s Enrichment of Life. 213 



































PREFACE 


There is more of Christ in the world 
to-day than in any previous period of 
history. In spite of its many failures and 
excesses, he is the controlling dynamic of 
modern civilization. He is the spring of 
its life; and thoughtful men and women, 
irrespective of race or creed, do him honor. 
Because Christ is at its center, the re¬ 
motest circumference of the modern world 
is moved and swayed by his spirit. Mod¬ 
ern culture has a Christian trend because 
Christ rules within it toward that end. The 
pages of history are Christian because he 
inspires, controls, and directs the life which 
the historian observes and records. 

The best possible approach to an appre¬ 
ciation of Jesus Christ is through personal 
religious experience. The basis of faith 
in him is in the soul itself, and what we 
experience there in our relation to a higher 
order helps us to understand him. The 
more deeply we live the more incom¬ 
parable do we find him. If we walk in 
the light as God gives it, feel its warmth, 


8 


PREFACE 


heat, and power, we apprehend his tran¬ 
scendent personality and presence, and 
rejoice in their efficacy, power, and unique¬ 
ness. We cannot lose Christ so long as 
we have thought and felt deeply. Human 
nature demands such a person as he and 
hails him with a joyous “My Lord and 
my God!” 

Since science has taught us to believe 
in the integrity of our religious experiences, 
we have been drawn to Jesus in increasing 
numbers. A common experience is the 
cause of this. What the Saviour saw, 
heard, and felt in his sublime moments 
we in a lesser degree have seen, heard, 
and felt. There is, therefore, an affinity 
between us and him that compels the 
acknowledgment of his divinity. We ap¬ 
prehend his deity because now also we 
are sons of God. To deny Christ is to 
dishonor ourselves. 

Our religious experiences, come they to 
us out of solitude, or the sanctuary, or 
from the manifold relations of society, 
lead unerringly to the recognition of his 
spiritual leadership and supremacy. Hav¬ 
ing them, faith is as natural an efflorescence 


PREFACE 


9 


of the soul as is the phenomenon we wit¬ 
ness in the unfolding of a bud into a flower. 

With this great principle in mind more 
than anything else, the following chapters 
were written. They are now submitted 
to the reading public in the sincere hope 
that in nothing may they detract from 
the beauty of Christ, whose incomparable 
personality and character are the inspira¬ 
tion of man’s undying soul. 

Many great hearts have contributed to 
the completion of this volume. Notable 
among them are the Rev. A. H. McKinney, 
D.D., eminent in the sphere of religious 
education, and the Rev. J. Francis Morgan, 
Ph.D., prominent in the Synod of New 
Jersey as pastor and preacher, who read 
the manuscript and gave valuable sug¬ 
gestions and criticisms. The writer is also 
greatly indebted to his devoted wife for 
her sacrifice of many evening hours at the 
family fireside while the writing of it was 
in progress. With the prayer and good 
wishes of these generous souls, the book is 
laid at the feet of the Christ as a slight 
expression of faith, gratitude, and devotion. 

November, 1914. C. W. L. 









THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 

Like the sun, which sheds its gentle warmth 
upon the earth and yet remains the sun, clothed 
in unique beauty, overwhelming force, and raging 
heat, the least part of which would suffice to con¬ 
sume the life created, so does Jesus appear among 
his surroundings.— Bousset , in his “Jesus” 










CHAPTER I 

THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 

“His name shall be called Wonderful, 
Counselor, The mighty God, The everlast¬ 
ing Father, The Prince of Peace.” Such 
was the Christ of the Messianic dreamer, 
and such is the Christ of history. In 
either case he exceeds the power of lan¬ 
guage to describe. Ordinary formulae of 
speech are inadequate and commonplace 
terms amazingly deficient in the depth, 
scope, and comprehensiveness that such a 
nature as his challenges and commands. 
He is so majestic in personality, sovereign 
in character, that language, in spite of 
its versatility and wealth of synonym, is 
poor in the ascriptions he deserves and 
we would give. He exhausts the superla¬ 
tive degree. Much of what we feel when 
we bow before him in reverence, or see 
when we study his life, or resolve when 
we come under his influence, must remain 
unexpressed in the solitude of the deeper 
self. His towering genius and uniqueness, 

13 


14 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


incomparable worth and philanthropy, defy 
analysis and description. 

Moreover, we will have to deal with 
Jesus Christ. The appeal of his personality 
and the contagion of his character cannot 
be ignored without personal loss. What¬ 
ever our judgment of him theologically, 
or estimate of his influence religiously, it 
would be folly to neglect him. The spir¬ 
itual nature of man needs such a Person 
as he is to arouse, quicken, and complete 
it. If we are at all interested in life and 
its enrichment, we must be concerned about 
Jesus Christ, who attained a completeness 
which is the inspiration of the world. 
Here is a Person who, according to the 
testimony of history and the verdict of 
personal experience, embodies in himself 
those inscrutable elements of soul which 
are the perfection of humanity and the 
fulfillment of its destiny. He is that Son 
of man in whose presence we know our¬ 
selves to be the sons of God. 

Our relation to such a Person, therefore, 
should be very vital and tender. Hoops 
of steel should bind us to him, and our 
consecration be one involving indissoluble 




THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 15 


ties. If he is what he said, our duty is 
clear and only one course remains—to 
follow where he leads and perform what 
he suggests. 

In the effort thus to obey him it is well 
to remember that nothing can be so author¬ 
itative and inspiring as what he has been 
to man in a living, personal way. Nothing 
can have more weight and significance than 
that. Personal experience is the great 
and compelling argument of ultimate and 
triumphant faith. 

If Christ has done for humanity what 
no other person could; if he has given 
it ideals to emulate which are far beyond 
human device and deceit; if he has fitted 
it with purposes that cannot be traced 
in so marked a degree or with such clear¬ 
ness to anyone else; if communion with 
and confidence in him contribute to life, 
health, virtue, righteousness, peace, then he 
deserves the highest and noblest allegiance. 

Now, such allegiance is the product of 
sincere dealing with the Christ. There is 
something about him so unique and com¬ 
pelling that obedience and loyalty of the 
highest order are inevitable. There is a 


16 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


majesty to his person that convinces the 
mind, satisfies the heart, and quickens 
the will. His abounding greatness and 
goodness win the assent of the soul and 
make certain convictions clear and definite 
to the mind and the heart of man. 

First, it becomes very evident that Jesus 
Christ is beyond our noblest thought of 
him. Our intellectual gauge of him neither 
comprehends nor exceeds him. The best 
and frankest estimate does him scant 
justice. One may sit down and, in a 
moment of adoration, pour out his love 
in song to his character, put into it all 
the idealism and nobility the heart can 
command or the brain conceive, or weave 
into his thought of him threads of gold, 
figures of light, and symbols of beauty; 
but when all is done and the delineation 
is complete, the incomparableness of his 
personality towers in glorious effulgence 
above what has been thought and wrought. 
Before his transcendent character the soul 
stands confused and ashamed. Its most 
finished thought of him fails of adequate 
expression, and its most silvery notes are 
but echoes of the symphony he is. 


THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 17 


That is not our experience with the 
lives of others. Great as they are, we 
can account for a Lincoln, a Washington, 
a Brooks, a Luther, a Saint Francis, or 
an Augustine, or for John the evangelist, 
or Isaiah the reformer. These we can 
comprehend. Indeed, our estimates may 
exceed them. Man’s loftiest picture of 
Lincoln is greater than he; and Washington, 
in spite of his gigantic proportions, falls 
short of the sublimest sonnet that may be 
written of him. Saint Francis is not as 
great as one’s ideal of a saint. In other 
words, these persons can be comprised in 
a biography and satisfactorily explained in 
a book. We can take their measurements, 
track the orbit of their life, and know the 
trend and temper of their thought. Or, 
conversely, we can overdraw our estimates. 
Our panegyrics may be too laudatory and 
our ascriptions exceed the truth. But there 
is no such peril in describing Christ. He 
is beyond our best and cannot be classified. 
He surpasses every known standard and 
walks alone in the palladium of the mighty. 
If one thinks of him as a man, he is seem¬ 
ingly like us all, but without a peer; or 


18 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


as a teacher, he is not unlike some we 
have known, but without parallel; or a 
prophet, his visions are like ours, but 
solitary in their clearness and authority. 
He is like all others, yet so far above and 
beyond them, that we do him violence 
when we identify him even with our best. 

When we have done with the utmost 
praise of him, we are like Angelo, who, 
having finished his famous painting of the 
Lord’s Supper, sat down and wept. Though 
t he had been careful about his life, and 
prayed while he worked, kept aloof from 
the defilement of the world, and disciplined 
his nature so that his hands might be 
gentle and facile with divine patience and 
grace; and though he mixed love with 
his paint, put soul and passion in his 
brush, when his task was completed and 
the face of the Lord stood out in almost 
divine glory, he withdrew confused. Christ 
was still beyond his best, and the con¬ 
trast so apparent that his great soul was 
subdued. 

The transcendence of Jesus Christ is 
unmistakable and conspicuous in every 
time and era of Christian history. Nine- 


THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 19 


teen hundred years of religious experience 
acclaim him, but everywhere and always 
he is beyond the ultimate grasp of the 
understanding. His is a personality the 
influence of which laves our life and the 
refreshing of which we enjoy, but which 
we cannot any more take in than a child 
the sea, in the surf of which it wades and 
plays. And this must be so because he 
is more than mere man and filled with 
the fullness of God. Though we were 
made in the image of God and can appre¬ 
hend the divine, here is one that rises 
above us. There are depths and heights 
in his nature which elude the compass of 
human knowledge. He embodies in him¬ 
self what humanity needs to know of God, 
but there are deeps no mental plummet 
has sounded yet. He incarnates a hu¬ 
manity that pulsates with the throbbing 
motion of the Eternal; but that sovereign 
movement no stethoscope has registered or 
recorded. 

His love, what mortal thought can reach, 
What mortal tongue display! 

Imagination’s utmost stretch 
In wonder dies away. 


20 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


Another startling truth to ponder is the 
catholicity of his sympathy, the universality 
of his love. 

By blood a Jew, Jesus is in charity a 
universal. Nineteen centuries of Jewish 
life flowed through his veins; a past hoary 
with age and rich in moral achievement 
beat in his breast; he was a lineal descend¬ 
ant of a nation of saints and prophets, 
poets and priests, and incarnated in his 
soul the fiery earnestness of its prophets, 
the social sympathy of its reformers, the 
consecration of its saints, the patriotism 
of its statesmen. He was the embodiment 
of the Messianic dream of a people which 
never permitted its identity to be lost 
in the motley and mobile interchange of 
races. But in spite of these facts and 
relations, he was brother to all. In him 
was no tribal nor provincial vanity. His 
patriotism was not the cloak of petty in¬ 
tolerance, but the engine of comprehensive 
benevolence, philanthropy, and brother¬ 
hood. True, he was born on Palestinian 
soil, but at the center of his nature was 
a cosmopolitan soul. The provincial in¬ 
terests of his people concerned him, but 


THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 21 


he was not confined to them. On the 
contrary, he rendered a ministry native to 
every clime and indigenous to every people. 
As a Jew he belonged to the most exclusive 
of the races; but as the Christ he drew to 
himself all men by his gifts and graces. 
He was the first great cosmopolitan of his¬ 
tory and embraced in his heart of hearts 
all lands and people. His love was an un¬ 
measured sea of goodness, the waters of 
which wash every shore and coastline of 
human need, and by an endless cycle of 
spiritual replenishment supply all the ex¬ 
pectant hearts and yearning souls of the 
world. 

Such was his public life that he attracted 
all classes of people. Race, color, creed 
mattered not. With amazing sympathy he 
went about doing good and by manifold 
acts of kindness proved himself to be the 
Redeemer of man. He was not an alien 
to any sphere of interest, but part and 
parcel of it. Wherever he went he beamed 
on high and low, and in his inimitable 
way drew great throngs to his heart. Not 
once in all his ministry did he refuse to 
respond to a single request that was born 


22 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


of sincerity and need. What is even more 
remarkable, history is a constant record of 
such saving grace and ministry, so that 
to-day his universality is conceded and 
cherished throughout the world. 

Behold him now where he comes! 

Not the Christ of our subtile creeds. 

But the light of our hearts, of our homes. 

Of our hopes, our prayers, our needs; 

The brother of want and blame, 

The lover of women and men. 

With a love that puts to shame 
All passions of mortal ken. 

His sovereign greatness is evidenced by 
still another fact worthy of note: his 
presence in the world is the supreme 
dynamic of character. Wherever he goes, 
or his influence reaches, or his spirit works, 
are miracles of life. 

In olden times, when he journeyed 
through Palestine, men and women came 
to look and listen, and left him marvel¬ 
ously moved and impressed. In his pres¬ 
ence there was life in a look. His deep, 
lustrous eyes revealed hidden depths and 
evoked latent energies of soul. He had 


THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 23 


power to illume the mind, inspire the 
heart, enlist the will. His presence worked 
reversals of character. His was a power 
that caused people to turn their backs 
on old habits and sins. The harlot left 
vice and consecrated herself to virtue. 
Fishermen left their nets to supply, under 
the guidance of his matchless spirit, needed 
moral and social leadership. In response 
to his appeal, scribes left their scrolls, tax- 
collectors their booths, lepers their haunts, 
scholars their schools, to step within the 
circle of his influence. And then, as they 
came and followed, he conquered and 
transformed them, renewed the sources of 
being, cleansed the channels of life, and 
filled the hearts of the people with the 
joy of exultant and triumphant manhood 
and womanhood. 

Such also is the testimony of history. 
Its pages are one continuous glowing scroll 
of conquest. Everywhere Christ takes men 
and women as he find them and converts 
them into dynamics of social and spiritual 
power. The courtesan’s love he diverts 
into a channel of sacrifice and philan¬ 
thropy; the drunkard’s thirst, in his hand, 


24 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


becomes a passion for righteousness; the 
grafter’s cunning is converted into an 
engine of benevolence. So wonderful is 
this that Fairbairn says, 4 ‘The most re¬ 
markable fact in the history of his life 
is the continuous and ubiquitous activity 
of his person.” 

How great his influence is we can¬ 
not conceive until we think of the church 
and its wealth, its social life and mis¬ 
sions, its institutions and far-reaching, 
world-encompassing policies. “Christ,” 
says George A. Gordon, “has once for all 
fixed the attention of the world upon 
himself, and henceforth it can never get 
his divine form out of its vision. He is 
imprinted forever upon the mental retina 
of the race, and one must endeavor to look 
upon the soul, and human society, and 
God himself, with the eyes that have 
Christ burned into their substance.” 

He is everywhere the supreme Lord of 
life and character. Yes! in the silence 
of the sky and the depths of the sea, in 
the solitude of the forest and in the peace 
of home—everywhere—is felt the marvel¬ 
ous movement of his all-controlling and 


THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 25 


ever-living personality. We cannot think 
of our higher self except through him, nor 
of God as our Father except through what 
Christ has taught us, nor of love but 
through his heart, nor of power except 
through his sovereignty. He is the molding 
energy of modern civilization, so diffusive 
and pervasive, so efficacious and ubiquitous, 
that we cannot but feel the pulse of his 
incomparable life surging underneath. His 
presence is a circle of light in which all 
things are clear and radiant, and he is 
the center of a sphere within which is a 
charity that calms, subdues, and trans¬ 
forms the soul. He is the incomparable 
Son of man, in whose benignant face we 
see God and can doubt no more. 

Such is the Christ as he stands before 
humanity—the marvel of eternal love and 
goodness. He moves us to prayer and 
tears, he inspires to praise and adoration, 
he thrills the soul with ecstasies of worship 
and song. He fills us with a sublime dis¬ 
content that makes us restless until we 
have recognized his excellence and declared 
it to all generations. 


26 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


Ye companies of governor-spirits grave, 

Bards, and old bringers-down of flaming news 
From steep-walled heavens, holy malcontents. 
Sweet seers, and stellar visionaries, all 
That brood about the skies of poesy. 

Full bright ye shine, insuperable stars; 

Yet, if a man look hard upon you, none 
With total luster blazeth, no, not one 
But hath some heinous freckle of the flesh 
Upon his shining cheek, not one but winks 
His ray, opaqued with intermittent mist 
Of defect; yea, you masters all must ask 
Some sweet forgiveness, which we leap to give. 

But thee, but thee, O sovereign seer of time, 

But thee, O poet’s Poet, wisdom’s Tongue, 

But thee, O man’s best Man, O love’s best Love, 

O perfect life in perfect labor writ, 

O all men’s Comrade, Servant, King, or Priest— 
What “if” or “yet,” what mole, what flaw, what 
lapse, 

What least defect or shadow of defect, 

What rumor, tattled by an enemy. 

Of inference loose, what lack of grace 

Even in torture’s grasp, or sleep’s or death’s— 

O, what amiss may I forgive in thee, 

Jesus, good Paragon, thou crystal Christ? 

(Sidney Lanier.) 


JESUS CHRIST AND THE RELIGIOUS 
LIFE OF MAN 







CHAPTER II 

JESUS CHRIST AND THE RELIGIOUS 
LIFE OF MAN 

Man is by nature religious, and, there¬ 
fore, everything which inspires the expe¬ 
rience of religion is of value to him. It 
attracts and interests him, and in due 
course becomes the subject of study, 
criticism, and philosophy. If after trial 
and investigation favorable judgment is 
handed down, he appropriates it, and by 
its virtue and strength he lives. 

Preeminently on that account the world 
is drawn to Jesus Christ. His life has 
been subjected to the definitive processes 
of the intellect and not been found want¬ 
ing. He has been placed by the side of 
every known standard and has always 
measured true. Because of this he is 
the inspiration of the sublimest emotions 
and activities of the soul. In him the 
religious nature of man reaches its sum¬ 
mit and humanity comes to flower. He 
is the incarnation of man’s best and, 
29 


\» 


30 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


therefore, the central spring of his re¬ 
ligious life. 

Many things in Jesus’s life and ministry 
will be forgotten, but he will always be 
remembered as the one Person of history 
who substantiates the religious experience 
of man. He gives it foundation. By the 
kind of life he lived, in which he trusted 
his religious intuitions to the full, he 
vindicates the spiritual nature of man for 
all time. Religion is not a mere fantasy; 
it is an incontrovertible and indestructible 
fact. It is not a will-o’-the-wisp experience, 
which comes from nowhere and disappears 
in nothing. Religion is the eternal fire 
of the soul, before which no material 
fact or series of facts can stand. It is 
not a dreamy substance of a disordered 
and melancholic imagination; it is the 
eternal dynamic of sane and healthy life. 
It has as natural a place in life as thought, 
feeling, will, and in its noblest activities 
inspires and glorifies each and all. “Re¬ 
ligion is the life of God in the soul of man.” 

Jesus Christ has prominence in the life 
of man because he makes this plain and 
indisputable. He believed in his sonship. 


THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF MAN 31 


gave scope to his spiritual nature, and 
lived a life so incomparable in service, 
sympathy, and sacrifice, that ever since 
the personal experience of religion is the 
one thing man cannot doubt, ignore, or 
discount. The strange promptings, emo¬ 
tions, instincts, and intuitions of the Spirit, 
seen in the light of his personality, have 
gained undying prestige and power. 

In one of his editorials Dr. Lyman 
Abbott, renowned for his vision and virility 
as writer and preacher, refers to the edu¬ 
cational method a certain philosopher em¬ 
ployed in training an only daughter. He 
took it upon himself to teach her how 
to live. “You must,” said he, “only 
believe in facts. Facts alone are wanted 
in life; plant nothing else and root out 
everything else.” He meant to impress 
upon her young mind that she must ad¬ 
mit only those phenomena for which she 
can account through the senses. She must 
believe what she can see, hear, touch, taste, 
and logically deduce from and by them. All 
else, though very fascinating, is irrelevant. 

His advice was bad, as later events 
proved. We may as doctrinaires deny the 


32 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


validity of the religious nature, but as 
common men and women it will swing 
and sway us at will. It will not be pushed 
aside. It is here, and here to stay. Schol¬ 
ars may aim to ignore it, but its bent 
and trend will continue to be felt in the 
process of things. It proved so in the 
case of the philosopher’s daughter. Though 
led to distrust her feelings, intuitions, in¬ 
stincts—or, if you choose, the higher voices 
of the soul—nature would not down. She 
discovered that what she was taught to 
shun were very real and essential. They 
had much to do with her happiness or 
unhappiness, unrest or peace, and so moved 
her to remonstrance. She had the feeling 
that she was deprived of her best, her 
humanity, her very self. 

When she made her feelings known to 
her scholarly sire he was greatly surprised 
and moved. “Some persons,” said he, 
“hold that there is a wisdom of the head 
and that there is a wisdom of the heart. 
I had not supposed so; but I mistrust 
myself now. I had supposed the head 
sufficient, but I can no more say it. Per¬ 
haps, Louisa, you are right.” 


THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF MAN 33 


Louisa was right. There are facts of 
the soul which, though they are of the 
substance of which dreams are made, 
Jesus Christ declared were life and spirit. 
Their potentiality he never questioned, be¬ 
cause he never distrusted the nature from 
which they sprang. For him man’s nature 
was interpenetrated with the Divine, and 
spiritual phenomena followed as. a matter 
of course. 

Some time ago I spent an afternoon 
hour with a man of high intellectual attain¬ 
ments and undoubted social prestige. Upon 
my entering his study he said: 6< I am glad 
to see you, though I am not one of you. 
Perhaps I ought to be, but there are too 
many things that I cannot explain.” His 
air of frankness and cordiality encouraged 
conversation and freedom. Together we 
wandered over the fields of thought, stop¬ 
ping here a little and lingering there a 
while. He talked, at length, of a great 
bereavement which took the companion of 
his life and the mother of his children 
out of the world. With eyes overflowing, 
he linked his arm with mine and con¬ 
ducted me from room to room, until we 


34 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


came to the open fireplace in the living 
room. There his voice grew mellow and 
confident. “Here,” said he, “we com¬ 
muned and whiled away the evening hours. 
And here, when I sit alone, something 
informs me we shall meet again.” 

Though many years my senior, I ven¬ 
tured to suggest, “How much those inti¬ 
mations must mean to you!” 

Quick as a flash and as bright, came the 
reply: “They are all things to me now. But 
for them, I could not endure living here.” 

His great soul was alive, alert, and final. 
In that hour the heart had the last word. 
He was nearer God than he knew; more 
devout than he dared to admit; and per¬ 
haps had more reason to be in the church 
than out of it. They were the great things 
of his life, and reacted upon his bereaved 
heart as holy balm. They are common 
to us all and operate with authority in 
our religious experience. Of them Words¬ 
worth says: 

But for these I raise 

The song of thanks and praise: 

For those obstinate questionings 
Of sense and outward things, 


THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF MAN 35 

Fallings from us, vanishings; 

Blank misgivings of a creature 
Moving about in worlds not realized. 

High instincts before which our mortal Nature 
Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised: 

For those first affections. 

Those shadowy recollections. 

Which be they what they may. 

Are yet the fountain light of all our day. 

Are yet a master light of all our seeing; 

Hence in a season of calm weather 
Though inland far we be, 

Our souls have sight of that immortal sea 
Which brought us hither, 

Can in a moment travel hither 
And see the children sport upon the shore. 

And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. 

George Eliot, in the book Felix Holt, 
depicts an interesting character in Esther 
Lyon, the supposed daughter of a minister. 
The little parish of Dr. Lyon is in the 
Scottish hills, where the winters are long, 
cold, and bitter, and where life has a 
Puritanic caste. Esther Lyon grew into a 
womanhood of rare charm and beauty, and 
rendered that obedience to her father that 


36 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


culture and grace anticipate. But there 
were moments, odd moments, and they be¬ 
came more frequent, when her nature re¬ 
volted against her surroundings. Though 
she could not understand, the environment 
in which she lived choked her. She felt 
cribbed and cabined. Though she loved 
Bonnie Scotland, her heart ached for the 
sunny clime of Southern France. Almost 
ashamed to admit it, France seemed like 
her native land. At last the secret is 
out. Exigencies arise when Dr. Lyon 
must disclose certain matters of the past. 
She is told that long years ago, when but 
a babe in her mother’s arms, his great 
heart gave her and her mother a home. 
Another, and not he, was her father, and 
the blood of the French nobility flowed 
in her veins. 

Such was her origin, and she knew it 
not. The chain of events had slipped a 
link. For years, many years, there w r as 
no connection between herself and her 
past save what she felt. But what she 
felt was pronounced, and colored all her 
career. Now, I ask, were her instincts 
and intuitions and emotions of no value? 


THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF MAN 37 


Were they intrinsically false, or were they 
not potentially her very self? 

Well! so is it with us in higher relations. 
Religion is our life. Its intimations of 
spiritual reality are very prominent at 
times and make or mar our happiness. 
Deep down in our hearts we long for other 
climes, for sunnier climes, with warmer air 
and purer surroundings and greater free¬ 
dom. It is Jesus Christ who comes to us 
and tells us that these things are so, be¬ 
cause the Eternal God pulsates in the 
soul. We are his offspring, and our sense 
of dependence is only our feeling the need 
of the Father. We yearn for other realms, 
because from them we sprang. The sources 
of humanity are in God, and the declaration 
of the fact is approved and verified by 
Jesus Christ. 

Naturally, then, humanity is concerned 
about God. If we are his offspring, who is he? 

The query strikes through the con¬ 
ventionality of things to the very root of 
life with the impact and inexorableness of 
lightning. It brooks no attenuation, but 
insists upon immediate judgment. Ques¬ 
tions of primogeniture are vital in the 


38 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


sight of the law, and in religion are final. 
Thus when Esther Lyon discovered her 
origin, her next concern was to know who 
her parents were. Her mother she remem¬ 
bered only faintly, like a vision or dream, 
like an angel face in the shadow of a 
cathedral. Hence, the old story runs on 
and informs us how the aged minister 
drew Esther to his side and, while she 
rested her head on his arm, told her all 
he knew. He recounted the happy years 
of wedded life that ended only with her 
father going to war. Loving her deeply, 
he hesitated often and spoke with trembling 
lips. At length, however, with deep emo¬ 
tion, he concluded by saying, “He was 
great and good, but heard of no more.” 
And Esther, gentle Esther, knowing how 
much it cost, replied, “Then, father, he 
was like you.” 

That was enough: he was great and 
good . That was all Esther Lyon needed 
to confirm her own life. And it is all we 
need to know concerning the Father from 
whom we sprang. What he is Jesus makes 
clear. He unravels our life connections and, 
step by step, leads to the mysterious 


THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF MAN 39 


origin of things—lifts the veil and shows 
us the Father. When he does so we are 
always quite sure that the Father must 
be like Jesus. God must be like the great 
and generous heart of the informing 
Saviour. And to set our hearts at rest, 
he says, “He that hath seen me hath 
seen the Father.” 

So true is this that if some one should 
ask us to bow our heads in silent prayer, 
and some X-ray camera obscura could 
photograph our thought, it would be found 
that our image of God is none other than 
the face of Christ. When we say “Our 
Father,” some picture of Jesus looms on 
the horizon of the mind and gives our 
thought of God content and definition. 
When we think of his love we are reminded 
of some deed which Jesus wrought. When 
we contemplate God’s power we do so in 
the light of some great event in Jesus’s 
ministry. We know God through Christ. 
Dr. George A. Gordon epitomizes the 
matter in this wise: “The greatest thing 
we know is man; and the greatest man 
we know is Christ, and for us Christ is 
the image of the invisible God.” 


40 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


These facts give us unspeakable con¬ 
fidence in the consummation of things. In 
a world like ours, with God-endowed souls, 
and such a God as Christ reveals, the 
end cannot be remiss. Mankind will come 
to its own in triumph and peace. The 
great capacities of our nature will fructify 
somewhere and somehow. Life is like a 
river in its course. Though it meanders 
through vast areas, washing at one place 
the granite foundations of mountains and 
ravines, watering in another spacious val¬ 
leys laden with harvests, flowing past cities 
black with soot and smoke, and quiet 
villages happy in their domesticity, at 
length, with sure and increased volume 
and momentum, it reaches the great sea. 
So also with life. The dreams which we 
have dreamed but could not express, the 
music we have felt but could not tran¬ 
scribe, the pictures we have imaged in 
the mind but could not trace on canvas 
—all we have planned and sought in the 
fulfillment of the higher life, will be real¬ 
ized in a clime so full and glorious that 
the sheen of a thousand sunsets cannot 
compare with it in effulgence and splendor. 


THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF MAN 41 


These are facts and tendencies of the 
soul which Jesus understood and vindicated. 
He brought them into the light, and man 
has never suffered them to relapse into 
the dark. He was so safely anchored in 
them that death had for him no peril 
nor distraction. He had irrepressible faith 
that he was not moving toward darkness 
and defeat. Life for him was not a bur¬ 
rowing through material facts to hell; it 
was a progress through spiritual phenomena 
to heaven. While in the flesh he was 
en rapport with God, and between the mind 
of God and his own, swift and convincing 
wireless messages were ever passing. To 
end with the Father was a fit and necessary 
climax for existence, and the supreme end 
toward which creation moved. 

So we observe the world and its gigantic 
demonstrations of power; we note the 
sublime movements of surging tides and 
rolling floods; in the silent hours of the 
night we stand and gaze at the moon, the 
stars, and the aurora borealis; we watch 
the gorgeous unfolding of the dawn and 
the receding magnificence of the eventide; 
we feel the rhythmic swing of things in the 


42 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


conflicts and achievements of man; and 
deep down in our souls we know that Jesus 
was right, and that God is not far away. 
The Creator is in his vast creation. He 
who has made it possible for us to know 
and in part understand his world is close 
at hand and lights up the path in which 
we move. By the joy we have and the 
peace we feel, by the visions he grants 
and the ecstasies he inspires, we know 
that a fairer city awaits our gaze—just 
beyond the turn of the road. 


JESUS CHRIST’S CONSCIOUSNESS 
OF HIMSELF 




CHAPTER III 

JESUS CHRIST’S CONSCIOUSNESS 
OF HIMSELF 

We want to look at Jesus as he saw 
himself, and, therefore, approach him not 
as curious onlookers but as sympathetic 
friends. In the measure that it is possible 
we will surrender ourselves to him, and, 
ignoring preconceived ideas and traditional 
views, let him speak of himself. As he 
saw himself so would we see him; as he 
knew himself so would we know him. As 
he was conscious of himself so would we 
be conscious of him. It is one thing to 
speak or write about a person, and it is 
quite another matter to let him do it 
himself. We know people outwardly; they 
know themselves inwardly, and are best 
prepared to lay bare the emotions, ideas, 
purposes, and aspirations of their life. It 
is one thing for us to throw Christ on a 
screen; it is quite another matter to have 

him do it himself. What we say may or 
45 


46 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


may not be important; but his words about 
himself should be final . He is his own best 
interpreter and biographer. 

For several reasons this will be our 
attitude. In the first place, we are per¬ 
sons who have a vital interest in life and 
are trying to find ourselves. In a sense 
we are navigators sailing on a strange sea 
and are, therefore, unfamiliar with its 
depths and coastline. Every little while 
we lift our telescopes to scan the horizon 
and drop our lines to sound the deeps. 
What we are and whither we are going 
are matters of grave concern. Therefore 
we are studying ourselves and sounding na¬ 
ture, wondering at the mystery of life and 
the versatility of the intellect, marveling 
at the fertility of the heart and nobility 
of the will. We believe that we have a 
connection with some One greater and 
better than man, to whose mysterious full¬ 
ness must be attributed what life we have 
and enjoy. There are moments when we 
know thought and feeling to be under 
the influence of Infinite Reality. “We 
are,” as Sir Oliver Lodge intimates, “con¬ 
nected with another scheme of things, with 


CHRIST’S CONSCIOUSNESS 


47 


something whose full significance lies else¬ 
where but which touches and interacts 
with this material universe in a certain 
way, building its particles into notable 
configurations for a time, without con¬ 
founding any physical laws, and then evap¬ 
orating whence it came.” We believe we 
touch God and are transfused by him, 
and turn to Jesus Christ because he had 
perfect knowledge of himself, man, and 
the Creator. 

In the second place, we want to get 
Jesus’s measurements, because of the con¬ 
fidence that knowledge of him inspires in 
the soul. As the supreme type of humanity, 
it will stimulate us to see the possibility 
of our own nature as it is revealed in him. 
In him we will see ourselves in the light 
of the highest possibilities of the soul. 
We will see ourselves in the light of our 
divine destiny. 

In the contemplation of Jesus, one thing 
deeply impresses us: he knew himself to 
be in vital connection with God. “I live,” 
said he, “by the Father.” “The works 
that I do, I do not of myself, the Father 
doeth the works.” “The Father loveth 


48 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


the Son, and sheweth him all things that 
himself doeth.” “I seek not my own will, 
but the will of the Father which sent me.” 
“As the Father knoweth me, even so know 
I the Father.” “I and my Father are 
one.” In the great hour of exigency when 
he stood by the grave of his friend Lazarus, 
he said, “Thou hearest me always.” And 
to anxious Philip, yearning for a vision of 
God, he said, “He that hath seen me hath 
seen the Father. Believest thou not that 
I am in the Father and the Father in me? 
The words that I speak unto you I speak 
not of myself, but the Father that dwell- 
eth in me, he doeth the works.” Such, 
briefly stated, is Christ’s consciousness of 
himself; and so clear was this relation to 
his mind that no greater wish could he 
entertain for us than the blessing expressed 
in his intercessory prayer, where he says, 
“I pray that they all may be one; as thou, 
Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they 
also may be one in us: that the world may 
believe that thou hast sent me.” 

The audacity of these words startles and 
grips the mind. They flash upon us with 
the conviction that Jesus is above our 


CHRIST’S CONSCIOUSNESS 


49 


humanity. He is unlike us in this, that 
he need not look for God. Job’s cry is 
not his lament. He is not looking for 
spiritual fountains and knows not where 
they are, not for resources of love and 
knows not where they are concealed. His 
brow is not furrowed, nor are his shoulders 
bent, nor his eyes dim by virtue of long 
and continued seeking after God. He 
knows God. The mysterious forces of the 
Godhead are wound around his heart. The 
roots of his nature are entangled with the 
Eternal. 4 ‘The certainty and simple force 
of his work,” says Bousset, “the sunshine, 
clearness, and freshness of his whole atti¬ 
tude toward life rests upon this founda¬ 
tion.” He feels and knows himself pene¬ 
trated and infused with Divinity. The 
pulse of the Infinite beats in his humanity. 

As such Christ knew himself, and as 
such the people received him. He lived 
so supremely that belief in his deity was 
a natural consequence. The impression of 
his personality was irresistible. “Thou art 
the Christ, the Son of the living God,” 
said Peter; and when one saw him die, 
and was struck by his demeanor, he said, 


50 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


“This is none other but the Son of God.” 
He lived so regally and exercised such 
authority over men and events that by 
instinct people believed him to have power 
over life and limb. The woman drew 
near from behind, saying within herself, 
“If I may but touch the hem of his garment, 
I shall be whole.” The centurion said, 
“Speak the word only, and my son shall 
be healed.” Nicodemus came seeking the 
light, because in his heart of hearts he 
believed him to have come from God. 
Christ was conscious of being indwelt of 
God; and what he believed, others con¬ 
ceded and accepted. He knew himself to 
be in a complete identification with God 
in his world purpose. “Jesus,” says John 
Weiss, “thinks no longer of his human 
personality, but of the divine content whose 
vessel he is.” He is filled and lighted up 
with the fullness of God, and he knows it. 
When the woman at the well speaks about 
the Messiah and his coming, and rejoices 
in the hope that then all things will be 
manifest, Jesus declares himself for all 
time: “I that speak unto thee am he.” 

Another thing that impresses us is that 


CHRIST’S CONSCIOUSNESS 51 


Jesus was conscious of himself as a funda¬ 
mental necessity to man. Looking out 
over the world with its treadmill existence 
for some, and luxurious ease for others, with 
its weary paths and somber ways, he said, 
“I am come that they might have life, 
and that they might have it abundantly.” 
In other words, Christ was conscious of 
himself as that Person in God’s economy 
of salvation who had in himself the secret 
of the ages, and was, as such, the power 
of God unto that end. So was he im¬ 
pressed with his life and mission that he 
used every possible metaphor and simile 
to make his relation clear and known. 

Listen to him as he sits and talks to the 
gathering throngs. How like a breath of 
heaven are his words as they fall on the 
multitude! “I am the bread of life: he 
that cometh to me shall never hunger; 
and he that believeth on me shall never 
thirst.” “I am the living bread which 
came down from heaven; if any man eat 
of this bread, he shall live forever.” “Ex¬ 
cept ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, 
and drink his blood, ye have no life in 
you.” “I am the way, the truth, and 


52 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


the life: no man cometh unto the Father, 
but by me.” 

It is evident that Christ knew himself 
to be the Messiah—the incarnation of 
that Personality which was the dream of 
centuries. He knew this and felt it. 
Though he never had the egotist’s way of 
saying it, he lived and served as the 
Messiah. What he said and did was 
inspired by the thought of himself. “Every¬ 
thing,” says Auguste Sabatier, “springs 
from his filial consciousness as a natural 
and wonderful efflorescence.” 

Two things become very clear to him 
as he watches the development of his 
Messianic consciousness, and, in his public 
ministry, he never allowed himself to de¬ 
part from them. They were: first, man 
needs to look in the right direction if he 
would realize his sonship; and, secondly, 
he needs to live from God-ordained sources. 

To meet the first of these conditions, 
Jesus thought of himself as guide and 
teacher, and variously declared himself 
such. When the occasion required it, 
his words fell with the sharpness and bril¬ 
liancy of lightning. When, on the other 


CHRIST’S CONSCIOUSNESS 


53 


hand, his auditors were mellowed by prayer 
and patience, his words were like drops 
of dew. When the lesson could not be 
otherwise taught, he rushed upon those in 
the way with whip and cords. He broke 
chains of custom and turned over pillars 
of tradition. In the presence of great 
wrong he awakened moral life and social 
responsibility by the assertion of his innate 
prerogatives. But in the main his pre¬ 
vailing note was a wooing note. Once, 
when there was a great crowd thronging 
him, he said, “Come unto me and I will 
give you rest.” And when they were 
seated about him, he spoke to them about 
the Father. By the use of images, parables, 
and paradoxes he got the people to look 
in the right direction. He showed them 
God. “He showed them God in his good¬ 
ness and told them that he directs all. 
God makes the sun to shine upon the 
evil and the good; he watches over spar¬ 
rows; he clothes the lilies of the field; he 
gives life and food. He notices the work 
we have to do and the trials we have to 
bear. He never leaves us to ourselves. 
His Spirit vivifies and fortifies our own. 


54 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 

He is at the origin of our life and at the 
end. We are ever in the Father’s hands.” 
Christ’s aim was to get people to look 
away from the sensuous to the spiritual, 
from dust to divinity. “The duty of 
man, he considered, was to change his 
heart rather than to change the order of 
things.” What is needed is new part¬ 
nerships, and these cannot be formed un¬ 
less man turns his back on those which 
have hindered his growth, and joins him¬ 
self to Him who said, “In me ye are com¬ 
plete.” The heart that looks to God 
grows that way and realizes his fullness. 

To encourage man in these sublime mat¬ 
ters Jesus lifted man into higher associa¬ 
tions. “Ye are my friends,” said he, and 
then added, “I have chosen you.” He 
secures right attitudes in man by assuming 
correct ones toward man. To this day 
his invitation and the acceptance of it 
secure access into the most exclusive and 
effective fraternity in the universe. In 
that solidarity the soul attains beatitude. 

But Christ felt himself to be the life 
of man, and, therefore, said, “I came that 
they might have life, and that they might 


CHRIST’S CONSCIOUSNESS 


55 


have it abundantly.” He felt that people 
were not living from proper sources. This 
and that occupation engaged them; this 
and that form of pleasure and amusement; 
but everywhere they were always just 
missing the unsearchable riches that he 
knew and enjoyed. As he thought of these 
things and was moved by the tragic scenes 
that transpired, it became clear that he 
had come not merely to reveal but also 
to communicate life to man. He is the 
life-center of the race—the great oasis in 
the desert where the great caravans of 
humanity stop, drink, and live. 

In pioneer days people built their houses 
near springs. So true was this that to¬ 
day, when we travel through the land and 
see the old landmarks, we can always be 
sure of one thing: there is a spring near 
by. This is not always true in life’s higher 
relations. We might be rich, but are poor; 
we might enjoy health, happiness, and 
peace, but we are in constant anxiety 
about our resources. These facts Christ 
took in and pondered. And he learned to 
know himself as not merely a “revelation 
of the divine life—he is the divine life. 


56 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


He is that life brought to the inlets and 
channels of man’s necessity.” He gives 
himself to us. His moral and religious 
health is communicated. He inspires in 
man not merely a correct attitude; he be¬ 
stows the power to make it effectual. He 
hints at new associations and gives the 
wherewithal to live there. We are raised 
to no empty peerage. With the honor 
comes a living. When Christ raises us to 
knighthood there comes with that act this 
draft on the exchange of heaven: 4 ‘What¬ 
soever ye ask of the Father in my name, 
he shall give it you.” Our life in Christ 
is a coronation with a royal income. It 
is a promotion with adequate equipment 
and substantial resources. We are lifted 
into a corporation, the driving power of 
which is God. 

Back of thy parents and grandparents lies 

The great eternal will! That too is thine 

Inheritance—strong, beautiful, divine. 

Sure ever of success for one who tries. 

There is no noble height thou canst not climb; 

All triumphs may be thine in Time’s futurity. 

If, whatsoever thy fault, thou dost not faint or halt; 

But lean upon the staff of God’s security. 


CHRIST’S CONSCIOUSNESS 


57 


Then Christ was conscious of himself 
as the supreme exemplar of manhood and 
womanhood. He is not only the giver 
of life; he is its moral and spiritual goal. 
He is the alpha and omega of all sovereign 
life. To be like Christ is the consumma¬ 
tion of all rightly directed life. “Ye are 
my friends, if ye do whatsoever I com¬ 
mand you. As I am in the world, so are 
ye. The servant is not greater than his 
Lord.” He is the first true man in God’s 
great world, and we are not on the right 
road of personal attainment unless his 
piety and compassion, brotherliness and 
philanthropy, are ever before us and find 
expression in us. The fight he waged 
with sin, superstition, and physical suffer¬ 
ing of man we are to wage. With him 
we are to experience God and find him 
“like a never-failing electric current flow¬ 
ing with quiet and even force through 
the soul”; and with him are we to enjoy 
man and see wrapped up in his soul the 
glory of God. “He,” says Sabatier, “was 
the servant of Jehovah, bearing the sins 
and miseries of his people, bruised, hu¬ 
miliated, and dying, and aimed to procure 


58 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


them life and healing.” Such is to be our 
mind and such our purpose. The kind 
of leadership he supplied his age we are 
to give our own, and the moral power 
he exerted we are to duplicate. 

Recently a prominent Philadelphia law¬ 
yer addressed a men’s club in that city. 
He spoke about boy criminals and the 
efforts made to reclaim them. With won¬ 
derful pathos and dramatic effect he dilated 
on juvenile courts, until at last, when he 
had thoroughly aroused his hearers, one of 
them interjected a question: “What can 
we do in the matter?” In an instant the 
lawyer got his clue and replied, “Attend 
the juvenile courts and become a big 
brother to one or two of the boys.” 

The rest we know. Behind the great 
movement of reclamation are America’s 
noblest men. Boys are realizing them¬ 
selves through their big brothers . 

But there is a story, the infinite pathos 
of which we cannot sound, or fathom, or 
describe—how one solemn evening, when 
the cruelest tragedy that the world ever 
witnessed was being planned, there rose up 
One to befriend our humanity forever. 


CHRIST’S CONSCIOUSNESS 


59 


“Let not your hearts be troubled.” “Ye 
have not chosen me, but I have chosen 
you.” “Be of good cheer, I have over¬ 
come the world.” 

Through that friendship, we realize our 
sonship; and when the heavens will be 
gathered up as a scroll and the earth shall 
be no more, its kindly ministry will give 
us abundant entrance to the Father’s 
house. 

I’ve found a Friend; O, such a Friend! 

All power to him is given, 

To guard me on my onward course, 

And bring me safe to heaven; 

Eternal glory gleams afar. 

To nerve my faint endeavor: 

So now to watch, to work, to war; 

And then to rest forever. 




























































































































THE INCARNATION AND ITS 
MESSAGE FOR HUMANITY 




CHAPTER IV 

THE INCARNATION AND ITS MESSAGE 
FOR HUMANITY 

The world is couched in mystery, but 
so soon as man is able to comprehend, 
God discloses what is essential to his life. 
To keep humanity in the dark and unin¬ 
formed is not his desire; and, therefore, 
down through the ages and among all 
people, he has been making himself and 
his creation known. God’s loving presence 
is in our midst, and all of us have supreme 
hours of revelation of which he alone, 
though we are not aware of it, is the in¬ 
spiration. On this account the incarnation, 
which is one of the supreme facts of re¬ 
ligious history, concerns us. In the light 
of it we see how vitally and completely 
God is identified with humanity. Great 
mystery that it is, life is illumined by the 
event, and our thought of it is infinitely 
enlarged. 

The incarnation of Jesus Christ has 
significance for us because it postulates 
what we often forget—the greatness of 
63 


64 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


our nature. That this should have been 
overlooked is not wholly our fault. The 
doctrine of the incarnation has been used 
almost exclusively to establish the deity 
of Christ, which it does establish without 
question. The essential greatness of our 
nature, however, has been overshadowed, 
not by the event, but by the enthusiasm 
of religious leaders who have been en¬ 
gaged in expounding the one at the expense 
of the other. Consequently, man has 
thought of himself, not in the light of 
his innate greatness, but in the light of 
his supposedly ancestral smallness. He is 
but a worm; but Christ is the Crown 
Prince of heaven. Man is but dust; Christ 
is divine. It never occurred to him that 
the incarnation of Jesus Christ can mean 
nothing to him if he is not lineally a son 
of God. 

Now, the fact of the matter is the 
breath of God is in us all, and we are 
brothers of our Lord Jesus Christ. God 
breathed into man, and he became a liv¬ 
ing spirit. Therefore we can apprehend what 
Jesus is, and measurably know him as the 
eternal Son who came to save the world. 


THE INCARNATION 


65 


It is clear, of course, that we can appre¬ 
hend only what we have faculties to per- L 
ceive, sense, and know. If we had no^ 
eyes, color could not be perceived. If / 
the body had no ear, the world might be 
full of thunder and music, but we could 
know neither. If the olfactory nerve had 
been denied, the earth might abound with 
honeyed odors and sweet smells, but they 
would be beyond our ken. Without spirit¬ 
ual instincts and intuitions unseen spiritual 
reality would be foreign and undiscovered. 
We can know only what we are prepared 
to perceive. Because it is of supernatural 
origin, the soul can know its God. 

From earliest time man has been deeply 
involved in spiritual phenomena. Con¬ 
scious of himself as spirit, man has been 
restless to explore things unseen and hidden. 
With a kind of sixth sense he has been 
able to scent the presence of another order 
of life impinging on this. He has felt 
within himself an affinity that gives him 
pleasure in communion with unseen reality, 
and this sense of pleasure he attributes 
to the fact that his origin must be there. 
He is happy in the contemplation of the 


66 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


celestial, because its marvelous life pul¬ 
sates in the terrestrial. He is concerned 
with the divine because that seems to be 
most truly himself. With the flower that 
lifts its head above the sod his restless 
soul looks beyond earth and sky to rest 
in God. Not in the sensuous but in the 
spiritual, center the great interests of man. 

By virtue of what we are we can know 
Jesus as the Son of God. A similar son- 
ship has endowed us with faculties by 
which we can discover and know him. 
Though life for each of us began in a 
social compact, we can know Jesus as the 
Christ, because soul emanated from deity. 
We too were conceived by the Eternal, 
by the Holy Ghost brooding over mother¬ 
hood and breathing into that holy relation 
once again the breath of life. Thus we 
became living souls. Our origin is not in 
matter, though it is involved in the process. 
There is a fleshly tabernacle, but the life 
that pulsates within it comes from afar. 

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: 

The soul that rises with us, our life’s star, 
Hath had elsewhere its setting, 

And cometh from afar. 


THE INCARNATION 


67 


Not in entire forgetfulness 
And not in utter nakedness. 

But trailing clouds of glory, do we come 
From God, who is our home. 

Something of the great God lives and 
moves in us all, and we can apprehend 
the Christ because we sprang from the 
same spiritual source. We discern Jesus 
Christ because we are kin. He is our 
Elder Brother, and, although so far re¬ 
moved from us in spiritual stature that 
he commands reverence and worship, we 
become aware of him by virtue of a com¬ 
mon origin in God. 

In thus recognizing Christ we are on 
the highway of self-knowledge. In the 
fact of the incarnation man has seen both 
Christ and himself. The discovery of his 
divineness involves our own: the faculties 
capable of taking in such a character must 
themselves be divine. On this account 
we welcome the incarnation of Jesus. Be¬ 
cause he comes into life with that mar¬ 
velous fullness of his we become aware of 
the inestimable greatness and glory of 
our humanity. He is the Light of Life, 
which relumes the mystery of the soul 


68 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


and makes it possible for us, with him, 
to trace our lineage direct to that time 
when God made man in his own image 
and delighted in him. “The coming of 
Christ,” says Dr. Gordon, “means the 
awakening of humanity to its ideal and 
divine side. To reject him is equivalent 
to the expulsion of the divine from human 
thought and concern. Humanity stands or 
falls with the acceptance or rejection of 
Christ, its King.” 

That is what we mean when Jesus is 
called the Word. As a word is a symbol 
of thought and the means of its expression, 
so he incarnates Deity and humanity. He 
expresses and declares both; and so lumi¬ 
nously effective is his life that, seeing it, 
we see ourselves in the light of a future 
pregnant with the possibility of self-realiza¬ 
tion. As the Word he not merely expresses 
soul but identity . To indicate just what 
I mean, let me illustrate. I recall an 
incident that occurred in the home of a 
friend, where the father of the family 
was aroused one night by footsteps in the 
hall downstairs. Instantly he bestirred 
himself, clinched his revolver, and quietly 


THE INCARNATION 


69 


stole to the head of the stairs and raised 
his weapon to fire. In that moment a 
voice said, “Father, it is I.” The gun 
dropped with the suddenness of lightning. 
Its death-dealing chamber never exploded. 
A word—just a word—was between death 
and that home. A word broke the still¬ 
ness of the night, reached the ear of 
another who was eagerly listening, and 
instantly recognized his own and said, 
“Thank God, my son, it is you.” 

Between the groping race and its destiny 
is a Word. For centuries prophets, poets, 
priests, and saints had flashes of insight 
of a great Messianic deliverer. Some day 
he would come. The light will shine in 
the darkness and the shadows flee. He 
will come to purge the world of ignorance, 
fear, death, and conduct it to safe anchor¬ 
age in the heart of God. Jesus Christ 
came.| He lived his life. He walked among 
men and women, and as he did so people 
saw in him not only the sublime glory of 
God, but also the lesser but not dissimilar 
glory of man. In his perfect humanity, 
filled with the fullness of God, man saw 
himself in the white-light of eternal truth. 


70 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


His coming was the dawn of a new era. 
Then history began anew, and it will 
never revert to what it was before. In 
the evolution of life and progress of events 
there will be no break or drop or collapse; 
but in the power and inspiration of the 
incarnation man will walk “Till traveling 
days are done.” 

The happiest thought is still to con¬ 
sider, namely, in the incarnation God takes 
humanity by the hand and leads it on 
and upward to safety and fruition. 

Christ comes to meet a need, not to be 
a spectacle; to minister and not to be 
ministered unto. In him and his devotion 
man has a vision of that eternal pity 
which is ever mindful of creation and 
servant to it. In the incarnation God’s 
love draws near to man to lead him to 
better, higher, and purer heights of attain¬ 
ment. We are just in the making, there¬ 
fore he comes to help. Though as a race 
we are doing great things, and by sheer 
force of mind and will are subduing the 
world, we are not yet matured. We are 
growing, and, in spite of our attainments, 
cannot see many years ahead, nor are we 


THE INCARNATION 


71 


always wise in the years we live. The 
end is not yet: it is still far removed in 
the future. We are pioneers on the frontier 
of a better day unborn. Momentous epochs 
lie before, as eras lie behind. History is 
eloquent alike of past triumphs and un¬ 
mistakable wrongs; but the future will be 
safer and more renowned; for in the in¬ 
carnation we see God’s hand on ours, 
leading us farther away from sin, error, 
and extinction. In our struggle against 
sin, God is for man a faithful ally—the 
power to combat and renew. As he goes 
with us through the world, which is em¬ 
phasized in the incarnation, and by his 
Holy Spirit breathes upon us, he makes 
us aware of the potentiality of our souls, 
and reminds us constantly of the still 
greater resources in himself. By thus 
imaging himself in Christ he teaches us 
that we need not be overcome of evil 
nor suffer moral defeat. In that event 
sin gets its deathblow, because man dis¬ 
covers his aboriginal greatness and is en¬ 
dowed with the vigor, passion, and moral 
purpose of God. 

In more relations than we can mention 


72 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


God has us by the hand. Mainly three 
concern us now. They are, as Sir Oliver 
Lodge intimates, birth, marriage, death. 
These are adventures, “and may,” says this 
man of renown, “turn out surprisingly well 
or astonishingly ill.” We do not always 
think so. We scarcely think of them as 
adventures, at least not of birth. But 
birth is an adventure fraught with sublime 
possibilities for good or ill. “Our coming 
into the planet, our becoming individuals 
and personalities, are great adventures.” 
But deep down in the soul we know God 
is involved in our existence and is deeply 
solicitous about our welfare. We are con¬ 
fident that he is behind every new life, 
and that accounts for the religious nature 
which it possesses. The presence of our 
religious capacities and ideas proves that 
in some inscrutable way we are kin of 
our heavenly Father. The soul is by 
nature capable of Christianity, and that 
explains why Christ alone can satisfy it. 

What, then, has the incarnation to say 
for the birth of every new life? What 
are we to think when birth and death 
certificates are constantly passing each 


THE INCARNATION 


73 


other on the way? What is its message 
to that important fact which moves and 
warms us so? There is only one reply, 
and it is inevitable. God’s protecting care 
encircles every new life. He takes child¬ 
hood by the hand and nurtures its soul. 
His attitude is not unlike the Saviour’s, 
and of him we read, 4 ‘He took little chil¬ 
dren up in his arms and blessed them.” 
God’s hand is on childhood and, there¬ 
fore, the race is safe. 

What, then, about marriage? Few facts 
give us greater concern than those which 
have to do with this sacred relation. It 
is a much abused relation and has been 
gone into lightly. It has been besmirched 
with the beast. Unholy alliances have 
shielded and now shield promiscuous and 
illicit wrongdoing, and thereby jeopardize 
birth and childhood. Owing to the super¬ 
ficial conventionalities and incontinence of 
man, the integrity of the home has been 
imperiled, and peace and happiness, in 
many instances, made next to impossible. 
What of the next generation, if so much 
of the present is of evil? 

Here, also, our peace need not be dis- 


74 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


turbed unduly. God’s interest is as vital 
and sympathetic as was His who said, 
“Fill the waterpots to the brim; draw out 
now, and bear to the ruler of the feast.” 
God’s hand is on that sacred relation, and 
in future years those who in love and 
honor seek secure and holy firesides will 
find him faithful. Needed hearts will 
come together, though as yet they are 
separated by continents and seas, and their 
unions will be sealed and blessed by earth 
and heaven. 

What, then, about those strange ques¬ 
tions of the soul which harass us on the 
way to the tomb? 

God’s hand is there in all its elemental 
strength. “Why,” asks the angel on the 
resurrection morning, “seek ye the living 
among the dead? He is not here: he is 
risen, as he said.” God’s hand is on the 
tomb and nothing, however great or mighty, 
can keep the trustful soul from coming 
to flower and fruit. 

Christ has triumphed, and we conquer 
By his mighty enterprise, 

We with him to life eternal 
By his resurrection rise. 


THE INCARNATION 


75 


So wherever we look the incarnation 
gives us confidence. God in Christ is 
leading us up the world’s altar stairs 
through the darkness into the light, through 
sin to righteousness, through death to eter¬ 
nal life and freedom. 

He guides us through the world 
In which we stumble. 

In the incarnation is indicated the eter¬ 
nal hope of the believing soul that at 
length it will attain beatitude in God. 
It was not made to die nor to be lost. 
There are things about it—instincts, ca¬ 
pacities, ideals, dreams—call them what 
you will—that crave another career and 
clime. The verdict of our faith, as of 
nature, is that the soul will not merely 
persist, but persist in God. Unlike summer 
clouds that form in the sky, spring out 
of the blue and presently disappear, we 
will never perish. You will be you, and 
I will be I. It is true there will come a 
time when the body turns to dust and 
mixes with the elements, but we will not 

Drop head foremost in the jaws of 
Vacant nothing and cease to be. 


76 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


The eternal God, revealed in Christ, will 
save his believing offspring, and, after 
many heartaches and tears, grant full 
fruition in fairer realms beyond sky and 
sun, where we shall see him, whom having 
not seen we love, and in whom we rejoice 
with joy unspeakable and full of glory. 


JESUS THE KEY TO GOD’S 
CHARACTER 





CHAPTER V 

JESUS THE KEY TO GOD’S CHARACTER 

If there is any one thing above another 
in which thinking men and women are 
concerned, it is the nature of God. So 
true is this that the cry of Job, “0, that 
I knew where I might find him/’ is uni¬ 
versal. From earliest time to this very 
hour, from the rude abodes of savagery 
to the secure and splendid precincts of 
civilization, the preeminent interest of the 
human soul is its craving for fellowship 
with unseen, spiritual reality. Succeeding 
in that, man is content. 

No greater injustice could be done hu¬ 
manity than to insinuate that it is no 
longer concerned about the matter or in¬ 
terested in the struggle to attain beatitude 
in God. The observation and the expe¬ 
rience of the humblest as well as the most 
erudite concur in this, that in no one, 
however low and degraded, wise and in¬ 
fluential, is absent this persistent reaching 
out of the soul for God. On the contrary, 
79 



80 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


we find it in the submerged of the East 
Side, in criminals behind prison bars, and 
among the compromising denizens of the 
Tenderloin. Peasants and artisans, in com¬ 
mon with the people and folk of every 
grade and station, are God-seekers. Man’s 
great thirst is that so notably expressed 
by an ancient poet, “My soul is athirst for 
God, for the living God.” So true is this 
now that people will bow the knee to that 
prophet or poet, philosopher or preacher 
who can declare him and make him 
known. 

Our age has been characterized as grossly 
materialistic and refinedly barbarous. Mat¬ 
ter, it is said, has gained ascendancy over 
spirit; business has taken worship and 
religion captive; might makes right; gold 
has superseded God. There is truth in 
all these statements. Conditions are pres¬ 
ent in our modern life which are extremely 
revolting and fill the heart with regret, 
misgiving, and alarm. There are seasons 
when the golden calf is worshiped with 
unforgetable license, which gives one the im¬ 
pression that civilization is reverting to 
those moral and social conditions which 


JESUS THE KEY 


81 


precipitated the great collapses of history. 
But when so much has been admitted, 
there is still another side to consider, and 
it is a wholesome and fruitful one. There 
is a silvern side to the shield, and its sheen 
is as genuine as it is beautiful. 

There is no gainsaying the fact that 
there never was a time when everything, 
from the Bible down to the minutest 
material force, received such scrutiny and 
analysis for the sake of substantiating the 
existence and character of God. Life in 
all phases and forms has been submitted 
to every conceivable test and trial. Every 
great subject of study, whether in the 
realms of theology and philosophy, science 
and metaphysics, has been tried and tested 
in the crucible of thought, to ascertain 
what it had to say about the Infinite. 
Said a man of affairs to me recently, “We 
who are in the whirlpool of commercialism 
have little to say about religion; but down 
in our hearts we hunger for it. If there 
is anything to be said for it, this is the 
time to speak; we are anxious to hear 
and learn. God is the food of the soul; 
give us the true bread of heaven and we 


82 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


are satisfied/’ That acute observation 
speaks for all of us and expresses precisely 
what is the common and sovereign hunger 
of the soul: it is God. 

Fortunately for us we may know God. 
We may know him not as an abstraction 
or definition merely, or as an argument. 
We may know God concretely and vitally. 
It is our privilege to know him as a Person 
and Friend, and have knowledge of him so 
positive and complete that we can doubt 
no more. That perfect knowledge is possi¬ 
ble in Christ. He is the key that unlocks 
the Infinite and brings the Eternal within 
the scope of our finite minds. In seeing 
Jesus we know God. 

Thus encouraged and inspired, let us 
observe some of the attributes of God 
which gain prominence in the person and 
presence of Jesus Christ. Here is one of 
them: God’s universal recognition of man. 
What I mean is illustrated by the service 
Jesus rendered to a bereaved woman in 
the time of severe trial. In connection 
with it, the following sentence is used: 
“When the Lord saw her, he had compas¬ 
sion on her and said, ‘Weep not.’ ” God 


JESUS THE KEY 


83 


is sight. The theologians would call it 
omniscience. But the simpler term will 
be more impressive. One attribute of God 
is his watchful, thoughtful, discerning vi¬ 
sion. God sees. God is a seer. His is 
the kind of sight which looks through 
nature and us, and takes into his thought 
every circumstance and condition of our 
life. God sees with a vision so deep and 
luminous, kind and solicitous, ubiquitous 
and penetrating, that in an instant he 
comprehends sorrow and its loss, misfortune 
and its privations, sin and its ruin, hope 
and its prospects, love and its rewards. 
God sees like that. He sees the endless 
round of the world and has perfect knowl¬ 
edge of you and me. God is a seer to whom 
all things are clear as light and all-encom¬ 
passing as air. God’s knowledge of us is 
all-inclusive and all-comprehensive. 

To get at the significance of this con¬ 
ception, let us linger for a moment on the 
experience of the widow of Nain, to which 
reference was made. In the miracle wrought 
at that time we have a clue to a condition. 
The miracle was possible because Jesus 
saw. “When the Lord saw her, he had 


84 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


compassion on her, and said unto her, 
‘Weep not.’ ” Sight was very important in 
that day’s event. It was the axis on which 
the wheel of experience moved. How 
essential it was and still is, let us remind 
ourselves, that at least four different types 
of eyes witnessed the funeral procession, 
yet only one moved its possessor to the 
work of rescue and benevolence. 

One type of eyes were in the head of a 
person who stopped on the way and saw 
the heavy shroud and overheard the weep¬ 
ing and the crying. He saw the widow 
and learned possibly that she was mourn¬ 
ing the loss of an only son. He saw. He 
saw as many people see and said what 
many people say under such circumstances: 
“It cannot be helped; all of us must come 
to it; what’s the use of whining?” There 
you have the sullen, sometimes acrid, and 
always comfortless sight of the fatalist. 

Another saw the funeral cortege pass. 
All that his fatalistic neighbor saw he 
witnessed; but he does not stop there. 
The mind that looks through his eyes is 
more exacting and possibly somewhat more 
practical. He notes how many hired 


JESUS THE KEY 


85 


mourners there are, how much the trap¬ 
pings have cost the sorrowing mother. The 
prudential philosophy that governs his life 
gives him a clue to the sad circumstance 
in which the widowed mother is placed. 
He saw, and feeling a trifle sad, he possibly 
uttered a groan. “It is hard, but in such 
a world as this, man’s duty is to discipline 
himself to endure. The best this woman 
can do is to bear it.” There you have 
the sight of the stoic—cold, inflexible, im¬ 
mobile, cheerless as winter’s night. 

Still another saw the procession pass. 
He took in all the tragic elements of that 
morning’s event. The grief of the mother, 
the evident sadness of her neighbors, the 
awful loss were eloquent in their appeal. 
All that he sees and is greatly moved. 
Tears well up in his hitherto radiant eyes, 
and he goes on his journey feeling that he 
can be glad no more, at least not for that 
day. The story is on his lips, and he tells 
the neighbors as he goes along. The bur¬ 
den must be on his heart, for he passes it 
on with feeling and tears. He wishes 
something might be done; but what, his 
deeply wrought-up nature fails to suggest. 


86 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


That is the sight of the warm, ebullient, 
effervescent sentimentalist. 

One more person saw the obsequious 
throng moving with measured tread down 
the road to the ancient Greenwood. He 
observed all that the others saw, but much 
more. Far beyond the superficial trap¬ 
pings, the empty obsequiousness of the 
hired mourners, and the heartfelt sorrow 
of the mother, He saw a home desolate 
in the village near by, and a garden un¬ 
tilled because the strong man of the house 
lies cold in death. He looked through the 
years and saw the poor mother go on her 
way unattended. He felt the loneliness and 
the burden which must be hers. He saw 
even more than that. He saw in the 
procession and through it, your grief and 
mine; he saw years of bitterness, and felt 
the desolation of broken hearts yet unborn. 
Behind that day’s funeral and the sorrow 
of a widow, he saw the multiform and 
ramified sorrow of the world. At the sight, 
his great heart bled. He saw and drew 
near and laid his hand on the bier, and felt 
within himself quivering energies that time 
and tide could neither measure, exhaust, 


JESUS THE KEY 


87 


nor defeat. In his incomparable love he 
said, “Young man, I say unto thee, Arise.” 

That was the sight of 

Immortal Love, forever full. 

Forever flowing free; 

Forever shared, forever whole, 

A never ebbing sea. 

Such is God. He may be much more, 
but he cannot be less. He is sight , knowl¬ 
edge, omniscience, so perfect and complete, 
so personal and universal that he knows 
and sees with the bewildering certainty 
and perspicacity of light. Like Jesus, he 
is aware of our inmost needs and breaks 
in upon our solitude and desolation with 
the quiet movement of the dew, and gives 
us a consciousness of himself that leads us 
to confess, “Surely God is in this place 
and we knew it not.” 

In this experience and Christ’s relation 
to it, as has been partly anticipated, is 
still another clue to the character of God. 
God is sympathy. God is love sharing 
sorrow. God is infinite compassion under 
the burden of humanity. God is a seer 
who sympathizes. God’s sight is born of 


88 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 

love, and goes forth to commiserate, save, 
and heal. 

Because he loves he sees as he does. 
Because he loves he draws near and lays 
his hand on the sore hearts of the world. 
Through sympathy, God’s sight becomes 
ewer sight. 

Some years ago a strong man in the 
employ of another was taken sick. After 
a lingering illness he was called to his 
reward. His employer, a man of strength 
and Christlike character, had knowledge of 
what transpired. He saw , stretched out in 
the future, years of hardship for the widow 
and her children. They would be for some 
time in the shadow-land of need and possi¬ 
ble privation. He saw. He saw and had 
compassion. He saw, and in a mysterious 
way his sight became oversight. No item 
of the funeral expenses came to that fire¬ 
side, nor did the physician’s fees harass 
the widowed heart. For months things 
happened which indicated that some one 
knew and cared. His was the sight that 
sympathized and, therefore, served. 

That is Godlikeness in man. That is 
God seeing and sympathizing through man. 


JESUS THE KEY 


89 


Multiply and clarify such qualities until 
you see in them the glowing fullness of 
Christ, and then you have a true and 
just portrait of God. If there be much 
more to know, God is at least that. God’s 
sympathy is like Christ’s—so sensitive that 
it is aware of us each and all. God’s sym¬ 
pathy is like that of the Good Shepherd, 
who bears us home when we have wan¬ 
dered from the fold. His is the feelingful 
patience of the physician who never leaves 
the sick chamber until the battle is won. 
His is the arm of beguiling tenderness 
which holds us up in trial and gives us 
visions of the hereafter looming on the 
horizon. 

God is love; his mercy brightens 
All the path in which we rove; 

Bliss he wakes and woe he lightens; 

God is wisdom, God is love. 

E’en the hour that darkest seemeth. 

Will his changeless goodness prove; 

From the gloom his brightness streameth, 
God is wisdom, God is love. 


There is nothing new in this for many 
of us. The story is old and has often been 


90 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


told. But is this conception of God as 
operative in its inspiration and influence 
as it might be? To many people God is 
still a foreigner. He is removed from the 
fighting line and not present in the pre¬ 
cincts of human strife and struggle. En¬ 
veloped with inexpressible splendor and 
power, he occupies the summits of blessed¬ 
ness and peace. Perhaps he knows, but 
surely he does not care. 

Such is not the God Christ reveals. 
Let me say it again, first to my own heart 
and then to you: God is here. He is where 
his love is—with his children. Where his 
children gather his presence broods. His 
presence crowds us now and fills at the 
same time the remotest niche of existence. 
He is in the circle of life where we move 
and live, and breathes upon us his gift 
of peace. Between him and us there is 
just a gossamer veil which the eye of faith 
can pierce and see beyond it his welcome, 
benignant face! 

Then it is often said that God is in¬ 
terested in man, but not vitally. God 
gives us brain and heart and will, and 
intimates that it is now our business to 


JESUS THE KEY 


91 


find our way through the world. He gives 
us gifts and hints, but never himself. He 
does what some fathers do when they 
send their sons into the world. They 
furnish them with needed capital and say, 
4 ‘There now, my son, the rest depends 
on you.” 

That is not the God of Christ. The 
God of Jesus takes short steps beside us 
through the world; he is with us in the 
yoke of service; he is our solace in sorrow, 
our friend in trial. Christ reveals a God 
“of heart and soul that feels sin, infamy, 
sorrow, and the mistakes of man,” and 
draws near as Jesus did to rescue from 
wreck and ruin. God is the one Person 
in the universe full of* vital, stimulating, 
and rescuing sympathy. 

Do you want to know the extent of it? 
Look at Jesus and his cross. There are 
the length and breadth and depth of it. 
There is love visualized. There we see 
to what length God is willing to go to 
verify and vindicate his love. Follow 
Jesus to the cross and observe him suffer. 
See how he goes, submits, dies; and there 
you have a picture of the infinite sympathy 


92 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


and adorable patience that woos and saves 
the world. 

God is salvation . He is the ultimate 
goal and eternal abiding place of the soul. 
He sees, he sympathizes, he saves. God 
is sight, sympathy, salvation. What Jesus 
did on that memorable morning God does 
every morning: he is forever laying his 
hands on every needy heart. God stands 
right in the midst of the ruin and wreckage 
of this sin-cursed world, to retrieve, re¬ 
claim, redeem. “Himself takes on our in¬ 
firmities, and bears our sicknesses.” He is 
afflicted when we are sorely tried and 
know not what to do nor whither to turn. 
What pains us moves his heart, so that 
what Jesus did when he drew near the 
mourners of old, God does now. He is 
bringing harmony out of chaos, peace out of 
confusion, victory out of defeat, righteous¬ 
ness out of social obliquity, life out of 
death. God is salvation. The destiny of 
man is involved in that; and God’s final 
purpose is not to scourge and crush, but 
to bring his children home to the fireside 
from which they sprang to be forever with 
him in enduring life and felicity. 


THE ATONEMENT 






CHAPTER VI 
THE ATONEMENT 

The atonement of Jesus Christ is the 
central fact of the New Testament and, 
as such, is fundamental to the personal 
religious life of Christendom. It has prior¬ 
ity and precedence in its thought, service, 
and worship, and determines its theology, 
liturgy, and government. The Christian’s 
thought of God reflects Calvary; his serv¬ 
ice is inspired by the sacrifice made there; 
and his public and private worship is 
enriched and solemnized by the love there 
revealed. The tragic death of Jesus has 
changed the religious history of the world. 

Philosophically we can know little about 
the atonement; experimentally we may en¬ 
joy its efficacy to the full. The meta¬ 
physics of it we cannot comprehend, for 
it was conceived in the heart of God. 
What it has wrought in human life it is 
our privilege to witness, share, report, and 
elucidate. As a fact of life it is so sub¬ 
lime that we can no more take it in than 
95 


96 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


a tub the ocean. But as we are blessed 
by the illimitable sea, though we cannot 
comprehend it, and enjoy its surging tides 
and beneficent air, so are we refreshed 
and comforted by the grace that flows 
from Calvary. 

We cannot expound the mystery of the 
atonement: that is hidden in God. Just 
as it is easier to record what a noble life 
did than to analyze what it was, so is it 
here. The benefits wrought for humanity, 
history can recount; but the atonement 
itself remains inscrutable. That we shall 
not explain while in the flesh. Before it 
we will always be silent and subdued, 
knowing in our heart of hearts that when 
we approach the cross we come very near 
to the bleeding heart of God. When we 
are able to comprehend him all else will 
be clear as the day. 

The effort has many times been made 
to theorize and dogmatize about it, and 
nearly always with the same result. In 
the effort to explain, the fact has been 
distorted almost beyond the semblance of 
truth. It has been divorced from rational 
insight and obscured by immemorial mis- 


THE ATONEMENT 


97 


understandings. It has been caricatured 
beyond recognition and made to minister to 
doubt and unfaith. On that account our 
aim will be to approach the atonement 
through the gateway of personal religious 
experience. It is possible to know the 
Saviour in the light of his vicarious sacri¬ 
fice without dissecting either him or it. 

We shall avoid, then, finely evolved 
metaphysical propositions and confine our¬ 
selves to what this great event has accom¬ 
plished for us personally and for mankind 
in the upward march of the race. That 
method will do more for us than if we 
permitted ourselves to wander in the jungle 
of theology, philosophy, and metaphysics. 

Looking at the atonement in this wise, 
several great facts gain prominence. The 
first to mention is this: By its efficacy and 
influence the sinful world and God are 
coming together. What Christ predicted 
is taking place. He said that by his death 
all the world would be drawn back to the 
bosom of God. He intimated that God 
and man would be bound to each other 
with indissoluble ties; and the inspiring 
fact is that, since the awful tragedy was 


98 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


enacted on Calvary, the race is slowly but 
surely finding its way to the Father’s heart. 

Nineteen centuries of Christian life have 
come and gone, and to-day man’s interest 
in the God of Christ is as diversified as 
the race. There has been a change in 
man’s uplook: it is more hopeful and con¬ 
soling; in his outlook: it is more humane 
and comprehensive; in his inlook: it is 
more chaste and ennobling. God means 
more to the soul and life is more sublimely 
sweet. The cross has inspired confidence 
everywhere, and man doubts no more that 
God is his Friend and Companion. This 
confidence was begotten by that death the 
blood marks of which have not yet been 
washed out of the soil of Palestine. 

The event took place in a comparatively 
small province, but the influence of it is 
worldwide. It conquered Rome, fascinated 
and converted the Greek, attracted bar¬ 
barian hordes on the Rhine, the Volga, 
the Danube, and the Thames. The aroma 
of Jesus Christ’s sacrifice crossed the At¬ 
lantic and, keeping pace with the march 
of empire, fostered and reared national 
life in the West. It swept the American 


THE ATONEMENT 


99 


continent and leaped the Pacific, so that 
Japan, China, India, and Turkestan feel 
its magic virtue and soul-redeeming power. 
This is the great miracle of the ages: a 
man dies in Palestine and by his death 
bends every knee to God. 

Now, if we inquire how this has come 
about, the answer is not far to seek. It is 
Christ. The world has seen in Jesus the 
fair and eternal lineaments of the suffering 
God. God is like Jesus, and his heart 
is sympathetic and sacrificial. Though he 
includes in himself all power, wisdom, and 
glory, he exercises the same in love. God, 
like Christ, is eternally involved in the 
struggle and pain of humankind. He 
stoops to our low estate to share our life 
and save us from sin. As Christ linked 
himself to humanity, God identifies him¬ 
self with us all. He steps within the 
circle of our moral leprosy, feels for us, 
pities us, and in Christ dies for us that 
by those outstretched arms he may draw 
us from sin to holiness, from vice to virtue, 
from fear to faith, from unrest to peace. 
These are some of the things that have 
transpired since the day when Pontius 


100 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


Pilate nailed the threefold inscription over 
the head of the Crucified. These sublime 
facts have been made real to us. The 
atonement has virtue in that it shows us 
God as the suffering Friend of the world. 
The cords of his love are wound around 
us and draw us to his bosom. 

How to illustrate the truth so as to 
bring it to the comprehension of our needy 
hearts is not easy. Common speech is 
inadequate and its symbols inapt; but let 
us risk a venture. 

Imagine a case like this: Here is a great 
business enterprise, which many years of 
sound principle, economy, industry, con¬ 
servative method, and honest dealing have 
created and made notable. Its organiza¬ 
tion is perfect and its departments thor¬ 
oughly maintained and equipped. It is 
managed on the strictest ethical principles, 
and so carefully carried on that it proceeds 
like the impressive movements of a sym¬ 
phony. One day, however, it is discovered 
that some one in the firm has committed 
a great wrong. By an inadvertence there 
is discovered, though the figures have been 
artfully juggled, that there is a shortage 


THE ATONEMENT 


101 


in the funds of the company. There have 
been misappropriations of the moneys of 
the firm. The wrongdoing comes to the 
superintendent of the clerical department 
with a painful jar. But quietly and with 
sad heart he steps up to the guilty person 
and informs him that his peculations are 
known. “My friend,” says he, “you have 
committed a crime that, if it is not covered 
at once, will destroy your home, ostracize 
you socially, and exile you from decency. 
You have done wrong and the deed will 
leave its Cain marks on your brow once 
the law brands you a criminal. Do not 
forget that. But what makes this offense 
hard is the fact that my father, the pres¬ 
ident of this company, who delighted in 
you from the beginning and by innumer¬ 
able courtesies and kindnesses made you, 
is sorely grieved and distressed. But I 
will say to him that I will help you shoulder 
the consequences. I will make good where 
you did wrong, and deny myself conve¬ 
niences and honors my savings might buy, 
in order that you may have another chance. 
You must live this down, and be the 
man father saw in you as a boy. I am 


102 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


going to be your friend, and should you 
ever find the burden hard, remember I 
am under it too. In the meanwhile you 
must stay at your desk and live down the 
wrong you have committed.” 

It is a poorly wrought picture, but if 
the father and the son come together at 
all in their effort to save the man, it is 
due to the fact that they are of the same 
mind. The father yields because he is 
like the son. The son pleads as he does 
because the generous sympathies of his 
father’s heart move his soul. There is a 
common bond between them essentially 
homogeneous and indivisible. Now, just 
so is it in the tides of man in their larger 
relations with God. In the stooping of 
Christ, in the shameful death and sacrifice, 
we see the heart of God. God is like 
Christ, and men and women of every 
clime are coming into his kingdom of 
grace, because unspeakable love is tugging 
at their hearts and will not let them 
drift. 

The atonement, in the second place, 
turns its terrible light on man’s greatest 
enemy—sin. It reveals its magnitude and 


THE ATONEMENT 


103 


ruin. So strong, steady, sharp is the light 
that it pours upon it that in sorrow and 
shame men and women are driven to re¬ 
pentance and to the resolution that it shall 
taint life no more. 

That is a great statement to make, but 
it is true. On Calvary we see not merely 
a race under impeachment: the thing is 
more personal tlian that! Its white light 
spots you and me. Ordinarily that is not 
the experience of man. Sin is never very 
ignominious unless seen in sharp contrast 
with righteousness. With many people it 
has more fascination than righteousness, is 
more alluring than virtue. The element of 
hazard and the possibility of escape from 
evil consequences give it a certain savor 
and exhilaration. Stolen fruit is sweet. 
But the spell is broken when it is seen in 
the light of the cross. How terrible and 
ruthless is the revelation of its virulence, 
hate, and ghastliness! Calvary is the 
climax of sin’s violence and ruin. Thither 
all our malfeasance leads in principle. But 
contrast is necessary to magnify the peril. 
To-morrow when you ride in the train, in 
imagination hold a cross before the daintily 


104 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


dressed courtesan that sits opposite you. 
How her picture hat and singularly attrac¬ 
tive countenance pale and pall! You can¬ 
not do it without tracing through mire 
and filth the awful course of pollution that 
her life involves. It is the greater good 
which the one symbolizes that reveals the 
imperfection of the other. A sickly face 
never looks so disconsolate as when it is 
seen in the presence of the ruddy coun¬ 
tenance of health. The disordered brain 
of an imbecile looms grotesque in the 
presence of the finely organized head of 
a Gladstone. Bad life is never more 
shocking than when it sits by the side 
of purity. The black cloud is blackest 
when the setting sun suddenly sends its 
luminous shafts upon it through rifts in 
the sky. Bad fruit is most distasteful 
when you accidentally push your finger 
into it in a basket of choice pickings. 
The power of contrast is evident every¬ 
where. See life in the white purity and im¬ 
maculate character of the suffering Christ; 
or, if you prefer a different figure of speech, 
hold the cross between the world as it is 
and what it ought to be and God designed 


THE ATONEMENT 


105 


it to be, and how terrible and gruesome 
is the sin that has marred and ravaged 
it! 

Do you ask me why the thoughtful 
everywhere are more fearful of sin, and 
why their resolution in fighting it is more 
formidable? Are you concerned to know 
why laws are enacted to forestall and 
punish it? The answer is plain: Man has 
had a vision of sin, its taint, and labeled 
it by its true name. The death of Christ 
is behind man’s recoil. Man has seen 
Jesus go down, hopeless and profoundly 
lonely, to make his death with male¬ 
factors, and has felt the lurid darkness of 
that day and the terrible loneliness of his 
soul, and now in deep contrition and shame 
for past failure turns to combat his ancient 
enemy, and is resolved, by God’s help, 
that righteousness, love, and truth shall 
be exalted in himself and in the earth. 

So also the atonement has become a 
world ideal. Its spell and fascination hold 
in leash the heart and mind of man. The 
Christ-spirit is pervading the world, and 
altruism and philanthropy are leavening its 
life. Humanity is coming forth to shake 


106 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


off brutedom and barbarism, and resolved 
to install love and brotherhood in their 
stead. 

Having been lifted up Christ draws all 
men and women to a common center of 
consecration and service. The fact that he 
has befriended the race is sufficient reason 
why none of us should be enemies. Be¬ 
cause we have a common Friend in him 
we may be and ought to be brethren. 
And so it has come to pass that the strong 
man no longer concentrates all his strength 
on himself; Jesus has shamed him out of 
it. He has come to see that he is his 
brother’s keeper and bound under God to 
serve him as such. 

At the great religious conference in 
Chicago, during the Exhibition there, this 
fact was beautifully illustrated. Attending 
it were religious leaders of every land. 
They were alike interested in a common 
subject. Though they came with diverse 
prejudices and various points of view, they 
were one in this: they were all looking up 
to the same, though variously apprehended, 
Deity. Many of the men who were re¬ 
sponsible for the conference and desired 


THE ATONEMENT 


107 


its success wondered what message or word 
could unite a throng so diversely consti¬ 
tuted. What music could cement their 
hearts? Great national anthems occurred 
to the minds of some. But if “Die Wacht 
am Rhein,” “The Marseillaise,” or “Amer¬ 
ica” had been suggested, every one would 
have been inappropriate. The common 
keynote was not in them. That must be 
found elsewhere, and it is inspiring to 
recall that it was found in a great hymn 
of Christendom. They sang the dying 
love of Jesus of Nazareth and no one 
took offense. Though it pictured the Man 
of Sorrows, the despised and crucified Son 
of Mary, there was nothing remiss. They 
rose as one body and with one voice sang 
verse after verse. Though many years 
have passed, the volume and majestic 
sweetness of that day’s chorus has not 
died away. Even now it thrills the soul: 

Rock of Ages, cleft for me. 

Let me hide myself in thee; 

Let the water and the blood, 

From thy riven side which flowed, 

Be of sin the double cure, 

Cleanse me from its guilt and power. 


108 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


Could my zeal no respite know. 
Could my tears forever flow. 

All for sin could not atone; 

Thou must save, and thou alone; 
Nothing in my hand I bring. 
Simply to thy cross I cling. 

While I draw this fleeting breath. 
When mine eyelids close in death. 
When I soar to worlds unknown, 
And behold thee on thy throne. 
Rock of Ages, cleft for me. 

Let me hide myself in thee. 


JESUS AND THE CHILD 








CHAPTER VII 
JESUS AND THE CHILD 
When Jesus said, “Suffer little children 
to come unto me,” a new era in religious 
education began. When he stooped to em¬ 
brace and bless them he changed the 
pedagogics of the world. 

In the first place Jesus indicated that 
the child has a right to the most sacred 
relations of life and must not be excluded 
from them. This is fundamental in his 
attitude and finds eloquent expression in 
the memorable words which he used to 
restrain the folly of the disciples when 
they motioned the mothers and their pre¬ 
cious charges aside. He takes his position 
by the side of the child and for all time 
challenges the attention and sympathy 
of man on its behalf. The doors of priv¬ 
ilege must ever be open to its approach, 
for as the bud needs the sun to unfold 
its beauty, so the child needs the sublimest 
relations to perfect and mature its nature. 
It is so richly endowed that it is worthy 
ill 


112 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


of the sunniest days and experiences, and 
when it is permitted to share them it not 
only honors but multiplies them. 

Jesus conducted his life around this 
central idea, and by word, precept, and 
example exhorted men and women to be 
open, frank, large-hearted, and generous in 
their attitude toward their children. They 
are not to be denied access to the light 
and cheer, glory and idealism of our best 
hours. They are not to be motioned away 
because they cannot understand the deep 
and sublime facts of life. They know more 
than we are willing to admit, and should 
always be greeted with the open, lustrous 
eyes of gentleness and love. When our 
arms are extended to receive them our 
spirits should be chastened by pure and 
holy association. The countenance that 
answers their anxious faces ought to be 
cordial with invitation, and the hand that 
guides them generous in touch and hold. 
If ever we can command sunlight its 
gleams should shine forth when children 
stand in our midst. 

The common sense of the domestic 
circle may serve us in this matter. How 


JESUS AND THE CHILD 


113 


often when children are about we counsel 
each other that care be exercised in what 
we say and do! We use words that con¬ 
vey deeper lessons and truths than we are 
ready to allow or practice. “Little pitchers 
have big ears.” “Small fish have large 
eyes.” “A small sponge may not com¬ 
prehend the sea, but it sucks in all that 
it can hold.” With these saws and adages 
we counsel each other, yet fail to grasp 
their deeper meaning; for the next moment 
either the voice of conversation ceases or 
the nurse takes the children upstairs. In 
conversation we counsel each other, in 
practice contradict each other, and inci¬ 
dentally deprive children of their just rights 
and privileges. 

Now, the way to get an oak out of an 
acorn is not by ignoring the nut. That 
would be insane. The thing to do is to 
study the acorn, couched as it is with 
internal forces which seek emancipation, 
and give it the environment that its na¬ 
ture anticipates and suggests. Given that, 
the sun and showers will do the rest. 
Because a boy is a mannikin should make 
us stand at attention. Perhaps to-morrow 


114 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


he may be a giant, and it is a matter of grave 
concern how he uses his arms and limbs. 

To-day the boy holds a rattle, but to¬ 
morrow he is the big man of battle. Just 
now he charges with fearful mischief upon 
paper soldiers and improvised ramparts; but 
to-morrow he may be that commander-in¬ 
chief at whose stentorian command great 
armies fight to death the enemies of the 
land. It is important, therefore, to look 
after the prince in order that the king 
may be saved. 

Christ’s example needs to be preached 
from the housetops; for, as Ernest K. 
Coulter, Clerk of the Children’s Court of 
New York County, says: “The recognition 
of even the most fundamental of the child’s 
rights is a slow process. . . . Being the 
weakest member of the community, the 
child is the last to come into his own.” 
That being so and much more that might 
be charged to our shame and sorrow, let 
us write anew over our hearthstones the 
memorable words of Jesus, “Suffer the 
little children to come unto me, and for¬ 
bid them not; for of such is the kingdom 
of God.” 


JESUS AND THE CHILD 


115 


The child, therefore, should be welcome 
to the best hours that God permits and 
sends us, not that it may be crowded with 
theological ideas and religious history, but 
that it may see, feel, and share the won¬ 
drous world in which father and mother 
live. “It is enough,” says Dr. Martineau, 
“if it but sees the parents bend with silent 
awe, or hears them speak as if they were 
children too, before a holier still: this 
will carry on the ideal gradation of rev¬ 
erence and show the filmy deep where the 
steps ascend the skies.” To create and 
maintain such an environment requires a 
high order of spiritual excellence; and in 
this, as in many other things, we need the 
broad, liberal, genuine piety of Christ. 
“His piety,” says Martineau, “brings to¬ 
gether the characteristic affection of differ¬ 
ent periods of life and keeps fresh the 
beauty of them all; it puts us back to 
whatever is blessed in childhood without 
abating one glory of our manhood; upon 
the embers of age it kindles once more 
the early fires of life, to send their genial 
glow through the evening chamber of the 
soul and shine with playful and mellowed 


116 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


light through its darkened windows—bright¬ 
est sign of a cheerful home to the passer-by 
in storm and rain.” Such is the atmos¬ 
phere the child needs, and when it is 
provided its destiny is assured. 

In the second place Jesus indicated the 
direction child nurture should take. He 
made room for children and said, “Let 
them come to me” He drew them to him¬ 
self and blessed them. 

Here is a principle that conditions not 
only healthy life but also its development 
and education. There must be some def¬ 
inite end in mind if life is to reach an 
honorable goal. This fact all the great 
teachers of the world appreciated. It 
gave distinctiveness to their life and work. 
For Buddha life is the suppression of the 
self. Plato does not think so at all: for 
him it consists in the vision of eternal 
ideas. The exercise of the reason is for 
Aristotle the highest ecstasy possible to the 
soul. Epicurus sees pleasure as the thing 
to be desired. For Goethe, the “highest 
good” is devotion to the well-being of 
humanity, and its distinctive marks are 
sacrifice, charity, and heroism. Kant makes 


JESUS AND THE CHILD 


117 


it to consist in good will. Jesus is no 
exception to this rule. He too sees clearly 
in his own eye what should be the end 
of human progress. “He declared,” says 
Dr. Brumbaugli, “that the end of the 
education of the human soul is to fit it 
to live in harmony with the will of God.” 
The end of Christian culture is Christian 
character. 

The aim of our educational processes, 
therefore, should be toward Christ. In the 
development of its religious nature every 
side of the child will be perfected and 
blessed. In realizing itself as a child of 
God it will secure creditable place, prom¬ 
inence, usefulness, and influence every¬ 
where in the social order. The attain¬ 
ment of virile Christian character carries 
with it the promise and guarantee of 
beatitude everywhere. 

So strongly has Christ impressed thought¬ 
ful men and women with this fact that 
many believe if the child is properly nur¬ 
tured and trained no risk need be taken 
as to the future of man. “Take care of 
the children,” says Nolan It. Best, our 
distinguished American journalist, “and the 


118 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


world will take care of itself. The nation 
which looks most diligently to the wel¬ 
fare of childhood will cap the climax of 
history.” Proper tutelage the first seven 
years of the child’s life will determine its 
character and destiny. The Jesuits have 
tenaciously held to this doctrine for cen¬ 
turies, and by faithfully practicing it have 
strengthened and enriched the influence of 
Catholicism. The success of Protestantism 
is less extensive, because this truth is 
either foreign to its adherents or neglected 
by them. It therefore needs restatement 
and emphasis. People must be led to see 
what is very clear to one of New York 
city’s great clergymen. He says: “You 
can teach botany in your class, but your 
teaching is a failure if your botany does 
not lead to the Rose of Sharon. So there 
are great and inspiring lessons in geology, 
but what matters our learning if we fail 
to acquaint children with the Rock of 
Ages? In history are many great names, 
illustrious for gallant deeds and beneficent 
service, but how futile the knowledge of 
them if, after all our pains, they cherish 
not the Name that is above every name.” 


JESUS AND THE CHILD 


119 


In developing, for instance, the feeling 
of home in the child, no fireside is so good 
as one’s own. Close by the place where 
father and mother sit should be the wicker 
basket in which baby sleeps. It cannot 
understand why the flames leap up the 
chimney, nor account for the harmony in 
the voice of conversation, but, in the 
meanwhile, the light and music of that 
sacred place pacify and ennoble it. The 
atmosphere and temper of the home soak 
into its being. 

It is so in the matter of health. Dis¬ 
cipline children toward that end, let them 
live in the sun and open fields, inhale 
the air laden with honeyed fragrance of 
clover and mint, permit them to wade the 
brook in the meadow and hear the robin’s 
call in the trees; let them be moved and 
touched by the sincerity and strength of 
nature, and by degrees its health becomes 
their own. The flavor of God’s out-of- 
doors is on their clothes and the savor 
of its beauty in their hearts. 

So also is it in religion. By nature the 
child is prepared to be. impressed by the 
mysterious. Reverence and compassion are 


120 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


the glory of childhood. By the first it is 
docile and humble, and by the second it 
is frank and free. By the instinct of 
reverence there are times when, in the 
presence of mystery, its eyes are all soul 
and its heart is full of worship. So great 
is the appeal of its nature in those hours 
that its body quivers with intensity of 
purpose, gracious feeling, chaste and sub¬ 
duing piety. In such moments to be 
loved by a child is to be caressed by heaven. 

This nature of the child it is our priv¬ 
ilege to mold and educate. “To educate 
it is not,” says Dr. Lyman Abbott, “to 
make the child over; it is to help him 
grow.” Therefore, he needs Christ. He 
needs Christ because a nature so richly 
endowed deserves to grow into the best 
and noblest life we know. He needs Christ, 
also, because his sympathy is like that of 
the gardener, who touches the bulbs and 
looses the leaves and petals of his plants, 
purges the stalk, and produces that ideal 
of loveliness, the American Beauty rose. 
The Christ-touch works miracles in child 
nurture. His touch is life and his bless¬ 
ing destiny. 


JESUS AND THE CHILD 121 

Again, Christ makes it very clear that 
the proper culture of childhood is service 
rendered to him. By saving the children 
we save men and women. But has it ever 
occurred to us that by saving the children 
we secure Christ to our humanity? “In¬ 
asmuch as ye have done it unto the least 
of these, ye have done it unto me.” In 
bringing our children to Christ, we bring 
Christ to ourselves. When he lays his 
hand on a babe’s head, he touches mother’s 
heart. He blesses it and her. In taking 
it to him she brings him to herself. 

When Leonidas, the father of Origen, 
kneeled beside his son, he felt him to be 
filled with the Holy Ghost and consecrated 
him to the church. The consecration of 
his son to that end did not impoverish 
the home—that too was filled with the 
Divine. Great was the joy when, in 
answer to prayer, Samuel was born into 
the home of Hannah and Elkanah. It 
was as though trailing clouds of heaven 
overshadowed them and their poor little 
home had been made a suburb of par¬ 
adise. But the sublimest hour in their 
happiness came on the day when Samuel 


m THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


was lent to the Lord. Then joy merged 
into thanksgiving, happiness was converted 
into ecstasy; then poverty inherited the 
glory of heaven and the fullness of the 
earth 

Parents bring their children to the bap¬ 
tismal font and there consecrate their 
children to God, and God meets them 
more than half way, for when they reach 
home again, lo! he stands benignantly by 
the trundle-bed! The child was held up 
for his touch and he came and relumed 
the fireside. 

So in a larger sense Christ has been 
saved to man through the proper culture 
of childhood. It is commonplace that the 
children of to-day are the citizens of to¬ 
morrow. Therefore, we are not at all 
surprised to learn that the very children 
Christ touched on that memorable day, in 
later years, when persecution was rife and 
men and women were driven to and fro, 
sheltered the refugees and exiles of the 
church. Once they were children and the 
disciples motioned them away; now they 
were matured in their manhood and woman¬ 
hood and hospitably received those who 


JESUS AND THE CHILD 


123 


came in the name of Christ. Once they 
were so small that Christ had to lift them; 
now, through his grace, they have become 
strong to hold Christ in the personnel of 
the church. The hint is clear and con¬ 
vincing: we can keep Christ in our hu¬ 
manity if we consecrate our children to him. 

0 may this example of the incomparable 
Christ inspire us to woo our loved ones 
to him while their lives are young and 
clean! While they are the inspiration and 
comfort of our homes and hearts let us 
bring them to him for his blessing, pro¬ 
tection, and salvation. 

He’ll lead them to the heavenly streams, 
Where living waters flow; 

And guide them to the fruitful fields, 

Where trees of knowledge grow. 

The feeblest lamb amidst the flock 
Shall be its Shepherd’s care; 

While folded in the Saviour’s arms, 

’Tis safe from every snare. 







JESUS CHRIST AND THE CASTAWAY 





CHAPTER VIII 

JESUS CHRIST AND THE CASTAWAY 
To enter into an appreciation of Jesus 
and his career, it is important to recall 
the times in which he lived, the despair 
of the people which he had to encounter, 
and the obstacles which he had to over¬ 
come. Rome was in power and nearly 
half of its population in slavery. The 
provinces which it had subjugated and 
assimilated into its imperial life were at 
its mercy and under tribute. Its system 
of taxation was the worst human ingenuity 
could devise and avarice enforce. Though 
not entirely absent from the minds of its 
sages and poets, equal rights and popular 
education were unknown. Law was an 
instrument of oppression; taxation a form 
of robbery; liberty another name for license 
and lawlessness. Under such a regime the 
rich were very rich and unmistakably im¬ 
moral; the poor very poor and therefore 
bitter and despondent. The middle class 
of respectability was small but hoping 
127 


128 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


against hope for a deliverer to lead them 
into the Canaan of freedom where slavery 
would be abolished, the peasant population 
enfranchised, wealth more equally distrib¬ 
uted, womanhood exalted, and domestic 
happiness be sustained by an atmosphere 
of virtue and love. 

The period was ominous with social 
misunderstandings and the common people 
were not considered much. They were the 
world’s castaways. They belonged to the 
world’s rubbish pile. They knew it, and 
so did the Saviour. 

But the important thing to remember 
these days is that the common people saw 
in Jesus a new type of man. He was 
different from the rest and they intrusted 
their lives to his care. He was their 
champion, and in his great heart they 
found the leadership they longed for and 
welcomed. 

They were correct in their estimate of 
him and justified in their devotion to 
him. Twenty centuries of life recognize and 
honor him. His imperial greatness is the 
table talk of the hour. There is in him 
a height of love that surpasses the best 


CHRIST AND THE CASTAWAY 129 


we know; a depth that enspheres the 
lowest; a breadth that embraces the re¬ 
motest clime. There is really nothing more 
stimulating about Jesus than the exquisite 
solicitude he had for the castaway, the 
unfortunate, the social bankrupt. Toward 
them he was always very tender and 
sympathetic. Others might consign them 
to the scrapheap of the world’s dumpage; 
but not he. No matter how unfortunate 
their condition among the submerged and 
lost, his love went out to rescue and reclaim. 

This is important for us to know, for 
there are times when we scarcely know 
what to do with the castaway. Man¬ 
ifestly something must be done, for we are 
not irresponsible. The world’s castaways 
are sometimes our kin and have brought 
great reproach upon the home and family 
honor. They have disturbed and outraged 
civilization and its complicated machinery. 
They constitute a social problem which has 
been variously met. The Jews were con¬ 
temptuous toward them, and had little, if 
any, mercy. The Roman made the cast¬ 
away his slave and the Greek made him 
his tool. Down through the ages he has 


130 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


been whipped and jailed, exiled and hanged. 
He has been driven into the serried ranks 
of battle and forced to settle the quarrels 
of nations. He has been the victim of 
the mailed hand of justice and been treated 
as though through his wrongdoing he had 
forfeited all claim to compassion. 

Sir Walter Scott gives us a classic picture 
in David Deans. To him is brought the 
information that a daughter of his has 
turned from the path of virtue. The 
rugged lines of his saintly face stand out 
in anguish, and he hopes that there must 
be some mistake. But when he is con¬ 
vinced dark anger sits on his brow and 
at last he agonizingly says: “She went 
out from us because she was not of us; 
let her gang her gait. The Lord knows 
she was the bairn of prayer and may not 
prove a castaway.” That is the mood of 
many, “She has gone out, let her alone.” 
It is also the mood of a certain type of 
philosophy which “loves humanity but hates 
the individual.” In every time and place 
man has been juggling with this problem, 
and, in the meanwhile, the castaway has 
had poor hope of salvation. 


CHRIST AND THE CASTAWAY 131 


But there can be no mistake about 
Jesus’ attitude. He championed the rights 
of the forlorn and lost. He had a definite 
policy of reclamation and was never idle 
in the prosecution of it. He was resolutely 
engaged in restoring the lost wanderers of 
the world. For the one that was lost his 
eyes were alert, his ears open, his heart 
unlocked. He came to insist that every 
man, however high or low, rich or poor 
—not the favored few, but all—should be 
redeemed and saved by all-encompassing 
and remedial love. 

Jesus cared for the castaway because he 
appreciated the possibility of his nature and 
profoundly believed it would respond to 
the touch of nobility and virtue. The lost 
prodigal may yet become the favored son 
of the fold. 

It is strange to observe that the world 
is just awaking to this principle, and recog¬ 
nizing the value of the world’s dumpage. 
Peter Cooper amassed wealth by converting 
scrapheaps into dollars; and it is significant 
to-day that in every thickly inhabited dis¬ 
trict are men and women who pay large 
prices for the privileges to trim scows and 


132 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


sort refuse. The world’s cinder heaps are 
turned into revenue. There is wealth in 
the castoffs of civilization. 

To associate fallen men and women in 
this way is almost sacrilegious. But no 
offense need be taken, for castoffs and 
castaways are entities the virtues of which 
have not yet been discovered. The cast¬ 
away has value, but is covered by the 
rubbish of worldliness and sin. Jesus under¬ 
stood that fully, and consequently took 
his stand in the midst of the rubbish 
pile, and by the tremendous appeal and 
solicitude of love emphasized its value. 
In him the castaway has a Friend that 
sticketh closer than a brother. Though 
he walked amid dark passions and the 
evils that grew out of them; saw the 
ignominy of men and women, and witnessed 
the terrible consequences that followed; 
though he felt the disdain, treachery, 
malignant designs of his enemies; though 
he observed the artifice and pretensions of 
the vain and strong, nothing ever dis¬ 
suaded him from his confidence in the 
eternal possibilities of the lowest and most 
vile. “Look where we may,” says Dr. 


CHRIST AND THE CASTAWAY 133 


Martineau, “it is clear that resentment has 
not the faintest share in Christ’s feelings 
toward wrong.” He sees its blindness, 
appalling darkness, and fearful degradation; 
but ever and always his pure eyes gaze 
into the most turbid hiding places of sin 
and detect the possibility of another and 
better life. He is disappointed with the 
aberration of the castaway, but hopeful as 
to the good he may yet achieve. 

Jesus was patient with the castaway 
because he knew that many of his failures 
and faults were due to his life connec¬ 
tions. He was aware, as none of us are, 
how many lives are tainted by the un¬ 
godly living of their progenitors. They 
came into the world with certain biases 
of nature latent in fiber and blood, which 
in later years, if not restrained, precipitate 
moral obliquity and social ruin. Severe as 
he was in his moral ideals, Jesus could 
never say what David Deans said, “She 
has gone out from us, because she is not 
one of us.” He felt that humanity was 
implicated and socially accountable for the 
failure of the lowest. Though he was 
sinless and never under moral impeach- 


134 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


ment, he felt that the iniquities and frail¬ 
ties of men involved him. Moreover, he 
knew that the life which goes down and 
fails is so inextricably interrelated and con¬ 
nected with us that, in its going and 
failure, it must take something of us with 
it. It goes out and fails, but perhaps the 
blame should be placed on the one who 
remained at home. Of this we are pos¬ 
itive, there have been instances where the 
vices of one generation were but the 
cravings of an earlier one. They came to 
flower in the one, but were sown in another. 

If science is severe about anything, it 
is about this. It traces connections with 
fearful and embarrassing exactness. It 
follows weakness back through the years 
and lays its fingers on deflections and 
escapades of earlier years. It deals with 
cases where judgment should have been 
administered on men and women who 
were buried in honor. It insists that 
misery is largely caused by humanity’s 
outrage of humanity. To-day’s pain is due 
to yesterday’s indiscretion. The present 
generation is born with a certain moral 
bias, cramped mind, darkened spirit, be- 


CHRIST AND THE CASTAWAY 135 


cause a former one was not true to itself 
and its God. 

Several years ago a mother of some 
prominence socially called upon the rector 
of a prominent church in a large city to 
plead for a son whose habits were the 
occasion of grave concern. She pleaded as 
only a mother can that he use his influence 
to save him. She protested that God was 
unjust to thus afflict her. She did not 
deserve it; it was unpardonably cruel and 
unjust of him to permit it. 

The good man listened with grave in¬ 
terest and when she had finished he 
counseled patience. When she wondered 
why such a course should be pursued he 
turned to a private parish record in which 
was the history of every member of his 
church for a period of thirty years. Draw¬ 
ing from it a card he said, 4 ‘First, we must, 
if possible, acquit God; secondly, we must 
find our duty in this deplorable matter.” 
Then looking at his record and examining 
it carefully, a dreamy look came over his 
face. At length he said: “My good woman, 
here in these days twenty years ago, your 
religious life gave me grave concern. Do 


136 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


not be hard on your son; what he is now, 
you were then. Possibly you have given 
him a bias toward the present course; and, 
therefore, you must follow him in love. 
Be gentle, firm, patient, prayerful, and 
forgiving.” 

O, for the vision of the Saviour who took 
in these deep-seated wrongs of the race 
and went out as the Good Shepherd to 
befriend the lost and fallen of the desert 
and brought them home! His example 
indicates our responsibility and duty. 

Again, Jesus is the Friend of the cast¬ 
away because the peace of God’s moral 
world is involved. The joy of the Father’s 
heart is not complete so long as the cast¬ 
away wanders in sin. 

This morning in playing a familiar hymn, 
you discovered that the alto D-string of 
your piano was out of tune. One string 
out of eighty-eight was not in accord with 
the rest. Just one! Yet that one string 
broke the harmony of the whole. You 
thought you could avoid it; but it had a 
mischievous way of making itself heard. 
Unconsciously, automatically, you struck it. 
The great hymn of the church, with its 


CHRIST AND THE CASTAWAY 137 


wonderful progression of chords, was 
broken. Just where the climax was intended 
by the composer and where the soul was 
to see and feel God, the D-string sounded 
—and it was false! The vast vision of 
the composer was blasted and its glory 
departed. 

What is to be done with the D-string? 
Have it tuned. Get it in accord with the 
rest. So let it be with the world’s cast¬ 
away, the poor wandering sheep that breaks 
the harmony of the world. Love him into 
accord with God and life and things. Go 
out into the highways and hedges and 
bring him home; so will the music of the 
world swell forth again in unbroken ca¬ 
dences of thanksgiving. 

The overflowing love of Jesus is ex¬ 
quisite in its method of reclamation, as is 
seen by his parable of the “Good Shep¬ 
herd,” which is vitally related to this 
theme. 

Love seeks the lost. It goes out into 
the night and over the path and the by¬ 
paths of the day’s grazing. It looks for 
the place of fascination and temptation, 
and for the precipice over which the sheep 


138 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


may have stumbled. It examines in the 
dim light twigs and brush, looks under¬ 
neath willows and rushes for some trace 
of the wayward feet. It is all eyes and 
ears. Like a hound it scents the air; like 
the eagle it penetrates the lowest deeps. 
But it persists until at length, far removed 
among the underbrush and in the mire, 
the stray sheep is found. 

Love bears home. O rare touch of genius! 
“He bears it on His shoulder.” Folly and 
weakness on the mighty shoulder of love 
—think of it! How different has our 
treatment of the lost sheep been! We 
have seen it treated otherwise. I have 
seen fallen men and women lashed by 
laws and penalties; and so have you. I 
have seen them whipped into line by 
the lash of necessity, when love alone 
could possibly have helped. Such is not 
the Christ-spirit, nor Christ. He takes up 
the castaway and his sin; he bears the 
sickness and the patient, and so says to 
a startled and supercritical world, “Thus 
shall my lost sheep have another right to 
the fold.” 

“Bears it rejoicing .” Christ’s method of 


CHRIST AND THE CASTAWAY 139 


love is an ascending scale of warmth, 
passion, music. His is the sympathy which 
sings while it serves, hums a lullaby of 
home as he journeys in the dark with his 
precious bundle on his back. His is the 
love that covers the crying of regret and 
shame with music and heart’s ease. Around 
the weeping, sobbing sinner he weaves a 
song of jubilant praise. 

Such is Christ’s method of reclamation, 
and the parable is autobiographical. The 
shepherd is none other than the Good 
Shepherd, sent by God to seek and save 
the lost. What the parable says, Jesus 
is; what it portrays in picture, he em¬ 
bodies in person. In a larger sense it 
is also the key to the very constitution 
of things. The cosmic order is redemptive: 
God’s love is at work there. Whatever 
people may think, or, in their sin and 
folly, continue to do, they have com¬ 
merce with a Redeemer whose solicitude 
they must combat at every turn of the 
road. Everywhere in life they have to 
do with a stupendous crusade of love , 
which seeks the lost hearts and moral 
shipwrecks of the world. They have to 


140 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


do with a Saviour the benevolence of 
whose ministry bears them up, and, if 
they cease to oppose, carries them home 
to honor and righteousness. The eye of 
the Saviour is on the world’s bankrupts; 
infinite love is seeking them; omnipotent 
strength is prepared to reclaim them. The 
very universe is bound up in an eternal 
crusade of redemption. 

These are the “good tidings of great 
joy,” the clarion resonance of which still 
rejoices the heart. We have to do with 
a Saviour who cares, and whose love is 
such that, though we may run wild and 
lose our way, will not forget nor let us 
go. He misses us in his stupendous plans. 
His joy is not complete until, after re¬ 
peated trials, tests, and infinite sadness, his 
mighty arms draw us to his heart and 
give us safe anchorage in his perfect peace. 

That is the gospel, as it comes sweep- 
ingly direct from the heart of God. The 
love it proclaims is so personal and in¬ 
dividual that the experience of it is as 
supremely real as the one described by 
Mrs. Browning in “A Child’s Thought of 
God”: 


CHRIST AND THE CASTAWAY 141 


I feel that his embrace 

Slides down by thrills, through all things made, 
Through sight and sound of every place: 

As if my tender mother laid 
On my shut lids her kisses’ pressure, 

Half-waking me at night; and said, 

“Who kissed you through the dark, dear guesser?” 

It is thus very evident that Jesus must 
forever be the great exemplar of the race, 
and the imitation of Jesus, the great ulti¬ 
mate duty of man. What he was we are 
to be in life and service. His conscience 
and sense of responsibility, his vision and 
virility must determine our occupations and 
professions, our holidays as well as our 
holy days. So long as the castaway ham¬ 
pers the progress, disturbs the peace, dis¬ 
rupts the unity of the world it is our duty 
to go back and reach back, stoop down and 
lift up. Per ad venture we may save some 
from sin and ruin. 

This great ministry should begin at our 
firesides, but not end there. Every vacant 
chair at family prayers should be an inter¬ 
rogation point—and a period. Involved in 
its mission must be all other relations, 
whether individual, social, communal, na- 


142 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


tional, or international. It includes the 
prodigal of Christendom and the benighted 
pagan of heathendom. It embraces our 
native town and the remotest hamlet of 
Mongolia. To be like Jesus is to ensphere 
the world with love; to serve like Jesus 
is to be as cosmopolitan in sacrifice; to 
live like Jesus is to be as genuine, intelli¬ 
gent, and thoroughgoing in love as was 
he. To express his life and mediate his 
influence, we must accept his leadership, 
belt our lives to his strength, incarnate 
his spirit, and prosecute his purpose, in 
the ramified and diversified concerns of 
humanity. 

Such is the appeal of his life, and honest 
men and women dare not ignore it. It 
comes to you, it comes to me with the 
impact and inexorableness of authority. 
“The consciousness of Christ,” says Dr. 
George A. Gordon, “is the highest known 
to mankind; the soul of Jesus and its 
content Godward and manward is without 
a rival; his vision and his love are first, 
and beside him there is no other. I can¬ 
not conceive of a nobler calling or a worthier 
task than that which seeks to master some- 


CHRIST AND THE CASTAWAY 143 


thing of the vision and love of Christ that 
it may make them the vision and the 
love of mankind.” This kind of consecra¬ 
tion is what the world is waiting for and 
expects. It is the consecration which has 
the mind and the heart of Christ and 
goes forth to serve and sacrifice, in the 
hope that the least and obscurest in God’s 
world may be attracted to higher and 
sublimer levels of life and character. 

As I apprehend it, we too must lay 
down our lives and pour out our souls 
until, after repeated setbacks and priva¬ 
tions, the tally sheet of the fold registers 
the fact that all are safely gathered in 
and not one is lost. 





























































































JESUS CHRIST AND THE CROWD 





CHAPTER IX 

JESUS CHRIST AND THE CROWD 
Jesus Christ is the first great Person 
of history who saw the crowd in self- 
sacrificing love; the first Leader of re¬ 
nown who did not use his influence to 
exploit it, but willingly sacrificed himself 
on its behalf. Tremendous hold that he 
had on the populace, swaying it by the 
magic of his ideas, the simplicity of his 
character, the purity of his motives, he 
asked nothing for himself. He did not 
ingratiate himself with people to gain 
friends, and, having gained them, use them 
for his own advancement. Nor did he 
appeal to popular prejudice and national 
feeling in order to become the idol of 
man. He looked at the crowd with the 
profound feeling of redemptive love and 
aimed to ennoble, enrich, and save it. 
He gave himself to the crowd with per¬ 
fect and bewildering self-effacement. His 
great heart went out in bleeding and bless- 
147 


148 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


ing. The fountains of his love were moved 
to refreshing and transforming ministry. 

You do not wonder, then, that his per¬ 
sonality commands attention everywhere 
and is the subject of study throughout the 
world. He is the hope of the world, the only 
Person in whom and through whom the 
great social problems of humanity can be 
readjusted, solved, and mastered. He is 
the one Person whose grace and patience 
can make the world a better place to live 
in. He has the power we need, as we ally 
ourselves with all chivalrous men and 
women everywhere to forestall wrongdoing, 
eradicate evil, eliminate superstition, and 
bring this luxury-loving age to a more 
rigorous and generous consecration of its 
means and power, and thus reconstitute 
society in accordance with the will of God. 

In our effort to put into operation in 
society the things for which Christ stands, 
we need to draw near to him for insight 
and inspiration. Society cannot be regen¬ 
erated, nor can the world be redeemed, 
except in that large way which God planned 
and proposed through him. The great 
machinery of social reform will not move 


CHRIST AND THE CROWD 149 


harmoniously and with added momentum, 
nor in the right direction, save by the 
power and passion of his life. 

Observe, then, first of all, his compas¬ 
sion for the crowd. When he saw it he 
was greatly moved. The depths of his 
soul were stirred. By the cords of love 
he was drawn to people to show them the 
way of life and to heal their sick. 

The crowd we know. It is the same 
crowd that has been the sport and play 
of many a tyrant, that has known the heels 
of the world’s Pharaohs, Herods, Caesars, 
and Napoleons. It is the crowd which has 
on its back the lash marks of abject and 
remorseless tyrannies, damnable injustice, 
unpardonable barbarism and brutedom. It 
is the crowd that has the tiger marks of 
selfishness on its body; the weariness and 
languor of heartsickness on its soul; the 
crush and grind of existence graven on 
its brow. It is the crowd that has felt 
the oppression and rigor of monopoly—the 
same crowd that works the mills and looms 
of humanity, tills the soil, digs trenches, 
builds bridges, creates wealth, yet for the 
most part is forced to eat its bread in 


150 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


bitterness. It is the crowd—the same 
crowd—that may be seen any evening, 
weary and beaten and baffled under the 
bondage of social wrongs. Its serried ranks 
are at our doors. 

See the crowd in your mind’s eye and 
look at Jesus. Give scope to imagination 
and let its luminous eyes penetrate the 
crowd’s heart, with its hidden loves, ro¬ 
mances, tragedies, hopes and fears; then 
halt to look at the majestic and benignant 
countenance of that Paragon of Love! 
Picture the crowd with its thirst and pas¬ 
sion for better days, and then see over 
against it the Man of Sorrows. What a 
picture it is! But the marvel of it is this: 
Jesus takes the crowd up into his heart 
and defies the world. 

That picture we need to make our own, 
if ever Christianity is to be the saving 
power of the world. It conveys the secret 
of Jesus’s power and indicates why the 
people loved him, were drawn to him, and 
sought his favor and blessing. He lavished 
himself on their obscure and discouraged 
lives; he gave himself to their poor estate, 
and ministered to the needs of their un- 


CHRIST AND THE CROWD 151 


dying souls. The multitude followed him 
because it knew he cared for it and had 
come to abet its inalienable rights in the 
progress of events. Christ was the Friend 
of the crowd. 

The relation grows upon us when we 
recall the possible attitudes a strong man 
may take in his relations to and dealings 
with the crowd. He may scorn it . He may 
contemn it. He may look at it through the 
eyes of a great man of letters who looked at 
England and said,“Forty millions of people 
—mostly fools.” Or his attitude may be 
even as repulsive and inhuman as the 
attitude of that emperor of France who 
looked at the common people and with 
lofty scorn and insolent derision and snarl¬ 
ing cynicism said, “The rabble! Let them 
eat straw.” 

The strong man may exploit the crowd 
and often does. It is said of a despot 
of the Middle Ages that one day he stood 
at a window of his castle to observe a 
troublesome throng rioting in front of his 
gate. He mused and chuckled to himself. 
In his heart of hearts he did not care a 
fig; and he resolved not to be outgeneraled. 


152 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


“I’ll give them bread, a bit of ribbondry, 
a measure of wine, and a holiday. That 
will suffice. They will close the day shout¬ 
ing, ‘Long live the king.’ ” 

One may look at the crowd through the 
eyes of an unscrupulous mill owner, who 
knows that their necessities depend on him, 
and therefore insists that they work and 
toil at his terms or die as miserable dogs. 
The strong man may look at the crowd 
and deal with it as some conscienceless 
monopolists do. The crowd must live. It 
may live, if it serves their purpose . It 
must do what they say, take what they 
dole out, and, if that is not enough, yield 
up its mothers, its daughters, and its 
sons. “We will,” say they, “have our way 
with the crowd. We are the castled knights 
on the chessboard of life. They are the 
pawns. If they stand in our way, we 
will sweep them off!” 

The strong man may look at the crowd 
as Jesus did. He looked, saw it, felt the 
deep undercurrents of its humanity, and 
resolved to release its hidden wealth. He, 
therefore, drew near and took upon him¬ 
self all its infirmities and sickness. He 


CHRIST AND THE CROWD 153 


felt the emotions of the man whose hands 
were hard and beaten, but whose soul was 
alive with sublime passion. He felt for 
the outcast and looked down through the 
centuries and saw the poverty and the 
slavery, the heartaches and homesickness 
of humanity, and with one tremendous 
sweep of love drew the crowd to himself, 
and thus—to God.. 

Then, in the second place, Jesus Christ, 
as no other, had a vision of the possi¬ 
bilities of the crowd. It was to him a 
golden harvest of righteousness. He saw 
in the men and women who thronged 
him the buried magnificence of their na¬ 
ture, that needed only the touch and pull 
of love and patience. What Lincoln saw, 
Jesus observed—the hundred homely vir¬ 
tues which make a people great; the 
endurance which makes them strong; the 
fortitude, the faith and the hope which 
are the foundation of progress and civiliza¬ 
tion. In some, who were considered but 
dust, he saw jewels of manly and womanly 
character. He saw in the crowd the 
preachers and philanthropists, the poets and 
philosophers, the priests and reformers of 


154 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


the future. Intrenched in the crowd was 
the kingdom of God. 

At this point Christendom has erred. 
Unlike Christ, it has underestimated the 
crowd, and, to its detriment and peril, 
neglected it. It is seen in the politics of 
nations. Supposed leaders inform us that 
the crowd cannot be trusted; the populace 
cannot understand. The populace must be 
cajoled and driven, but never led. But 
there is a great deal of human nature 
in the worst of men and always enough 
goodness and sanity to turn the tide of 
things. Give them a Christ to lead and 
the masses are sure to follow. 

The great mistake of George III was 
just this: His Majesty saw nothing very su¬ 
perior in the American farmers. He forgot 
that they were his kin. To him they were 
but pioneers, adventurers, and he failed 
to see underneath their homespun the in¬ 
vincible prophets and statesmen of a new 
era, and sandwiched between a host of 
warm-blooded men and women, as royal 
and clean as the most select in the king’s 
own court. 

It is frequently true of the church that 


CHRIST AND THE CROWD 155 


the crowd is not in its sacred precincts. 
Perhaps the church has no longer Christ’s 
heart, nor his eyes, nor his gifts and graces. 
It may be that the crowd is at fault: the 
old thirst and passion for God and right¬ 
eousness may be gone. But be that as it may, 
the crowd was always where Jesus was. 

Even now he is in the midst of it. Be¬ 
hind the crowd, aye, beside it, is the 
Christ. Ecclesiastics may not be there; 
but he is. In his own good time the crowd 
will wake and rise in its might to con¬ 
found the mighty and vanquish the strong. 
It is often said that reform must begin 
at the top among the reflective and in¬ 
formed. But it may begin at the bottom, 
and there it will begin, if Christ is sta¬ 
tioned there with his all-conquering faith 
and passion. 

The tenderest and most inspiring thought 
has been partly anticipated: Christ con¬ 
secrated himself to the crowd. He not 
merely thought well of it; He served it. 
The purpose of his life was to get the 
crowd safely anchored in righteousness. 

This is extremely interesting. Christ’s 
interest in it is a saving one. He has not 


156 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


left it to the wild waves of disaster and 
ruin. He has a line on the masses and 
knows when and where to pull their mem¬ 
bers into safety. His work of sympathy 
and intercession continues. To it he has 
consecrated himself. The risks he took in 
primitive days, he takes now. He does 
not sit somewhere on the edge of the 
world to see how things come and go. He 
is in the game of life, and never is a loser. 
He is resident as the controlling dynamic 
of a slow but sure, extensive but benevolent 
evolution of social regeneration and ful¬ 
fillment. He is not counting on beneficent 
earthquakes, or timely comets, or tidal 
waves. The years of restoration are long 
and tedious; but he is in the years, with 
a hand as strong as his heart is warm, 
and a purpose as beneficent as it is inex¬ 
orable and final. Some day the crowd 
will rise and hail him king. Until then, 
let all who know and love him lift their 
hearts and sing: 

All hail the power of Jesus’ name! 

Let angels prostrate fall; 

Bring forth the royal diadem, 

And crown him Lord of all. 


JESUS CHRIST THE BURDEN 
BEARER 








CHAPTER X 

JESUS CHRIST THE BURDEN BEARER 

The burdens of the world are many, 
but there is only one Burden Bearer, and 
his deliverance is for all. He stands at 
the threshold of every need as the strong 
Son of God, whose all-embracing love never 
fails. His comforting message to man is, 
“Come unto me, all ye that labor and 
are heavy laden, and I will give you 
rest.” 

Such information is welcome and in¬ 
spiring, for all of us have burdens of which 
we are trying to rid ourselves. The most 
hopeful have some one thing or two press¬ 
ing on the heart or weighing heavily on 
the back. In every assembly of people, 
if not in every household, is at least one 
person who would flee away from cumber¬ 
ing care and be at rest. Perhaps we have 
all wished at some time for the wings of 
the morning, that in flight we might secure 
freedom. But flight gives no respite be- 
159 


160 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


cause burdens have pinions as fleet as the 
wind and reach the contemplated place of 
refuge a trifle ahead of schedule time, 
where, on our arriving, they greet us with 
a dismal “I am here too!” 

Neither can our burdens be left at 
another’s door. You will not accept mine, 
and I am not quite convinced that the 
one I have is lighter than yours. If we 
leave them at a neighbor’s door, they are 
returned by the next express with a few 
new ones tucked in for being so thought¬ 
less and presumptuous. Nor do they get 
lighter by the resolve to bear up under 
them. Sheer will power may take us a 
long way, but if the burden continues on 
the back it will ultimately exhaust one’s 
strength. Burdens may be borne with 
magnificent tranquillity and heroic forti¬ 
tude, splendid courage and exquisite de¬ 
termination; but at length the hand tires 
and drops, the lustrous eye grows dim 
and twilight creeps over the mind. ‘‘The 
burden,” says Dr. Jowett, “registers its 
presence in a wearied body. The secret 
moan results in aching bones.” Burdens 
wear out the human engine, exhaust its 


CHRIST THE BURDEN BEARER 161 


driving power, and the mighty levers re¬ 
fuse to move in response to the heroic 
spirit within. 

What, then, are we to do with our 
burdens? We cannot escape them through 
flight; neighbors refuse to house them; 
and they crush us if their heft is unduly 
prolonged. They may be our ruin, unless 
some means of deliverance is afforded. 

Fortunately we have Jesus Christ. In 
him we may find help and succor. If his 
great words of solace on this subject are 
to be taken seriously—and we certainly be¬ 
lieve they should be—the whole question 
of burden bearing has been solved forever, 
and several things become very clear and 
comforting to us. 

First, the burdens on our backs are on 
the heart of the Saviour. 

Secondly, we are assured that we need 
not bear them alone and unassisted. 

Thirdly, our burdens become the means 
of refreshing rest. 

The burden on man’s back is on the 
heart of the Saviour. By his perfect 
omniscience he comprehends us and it. 
How it twists and turns us on the way, 


162 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


darkens our outlook, embitters the spirit, 
fevers the brain, frets the heart, saps the 
soul, he understands. Nothing about it 
can be concealed, for he bears it on his 
heart. 

“No, you can tell me nothing new,” 
said a mother to her daughter. “I have 
borne you on my heart for weeks. Tell 
me nothing; just come and rest your 
weary soul.” Such is God’s relation to 
us through Christ; and no truth needs 
more emphasis and restatement than 
that. God cares; and the fact that he 
does already takes some of the heft 
from the burden and some pain from 
the spot on which it hangs. His under¬ 
standing of us strengthens for the day 
of trial and fortifies the soul against evil. 
We are confident, patient, and strong 
because he is faithful, long-suffering, 
and kind. The burdens on our back 
are less heavy because he bears us on his 
heart. 

O Love divine, that stooped to share 
Our sharpest pang, our bitterest tear! 

On thee we cast each earthborn care; 

We smile at pain while thou art near. 


CHRIST THE BURDEN BEARER 163 


On thee we fling our burdening woe, 

O Love divine, forever dear; 

Content to suffer, while we know, 

Living and dying, thou art near! 

If there is anything which makes a 
burden heavy, it is misunderstanding or 
cold indifference. “No one seems to know 
or care,” has wrecked countless lives. 
When the world moves right on like an 
iceberg in the ocean, cold and inexorable, 
men and women that otherwise might have 
been strong languish and faint. How often 
there is weeping in one block and dancing 
in the next! A group of mourners meet 
at a grave, and a stone’s throw away 
others are indulging in frivolity. There is 
crape on one door and a wedding bell 
on the one two houses removed. For 
many of us, that is the world we know, 
see, and meet; and all the while the soul 
within us hungers for sympathy, solace, 
peace. It wants some one like Jesus Christ, 
in whose perfect love it may find respite, 
as does a tired child on the bosom of its 
mother. 

Many of the great tragedies of history 
are directly traceable to indifference. Be- 


164 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


cause nobody cared, or those who did were 
too weak to help, bankruptcy of soul 
followed. The world was cold and no 
heart beat with soul-stirring compassion; 
and so, discouraged and forlorn, they came 
to naught. Keats, the brilliant youth, went 
down to dust because few hearts appre¬ 
ciated the divinity of his talents. Byron’s 
star might have been a second sun had 
he been wooed and loved by wise and 
prudent instead of foolish and wanton 
women. Sir Joshua Reynolds was almost 
crushed when in his youth he brought a 
drawing to his father, who, in his severity 
and coldness, looked it over, and then 
wrote at the bottom of it, “Joshua did 
this in one of his lazy moments.” So also 
a Maine jurist, unmeaningly perhaps, har¬ 
assed the heart of Longfellow. Misunder¬ 
standing increases the heft of the burdens 
we bear; indifference makes them crushing. 
If people would only steal into the twi¬ 
light when we sit there alone, or to our 
firesides when we are disconsolate, what a 
difference it would make! But too fre¬ 
quently no one comes but the Nazarene. 
But he suffices; for his incomparable 


CHRIST THE BURDEN BEARER 165 


strength and sympathy puts us at rest. 
His word gives heart’s ease. “I know,” 
he seems to say, “all about it, and you 
must be afraid no more. Let me abide 
with you until the morning breaks.” 

Now, if Jesus knows, as he does, he will 
do several things for us: 

He will convince us of the fact. Recall 
for a moment the story of Hagar—the long, 
lonely, bitter story of an outcast. She was 
the victim of a crude and merciless social 
order, and was thrust out and made the 
prey of the elements like driftwood tossed 
by the sea, like a leaf driven by the wind, 
like a soul caught in a mighty maelstrom 
of sorrow. But some one knew and that 
some one cared. He stood in the way, 
and, when her heart in despair gave itself 
up to die, the majestic presence of his 
infinite love hailed her. O, how her troubled 
heart leaped into the folds of compassion 
as she cried, “Thou, God, seest me!” The 
burden fell from her back the moment she 
learned it was on the heart of God. 

Then if Jesus Christ knows, we can 
expect him to shield us from what would 
otherwise crush and ruin us. No testing 


166 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


time will come to us but there comes with 
it also a way of escape. With the burden 
comes Christ, the Burden Bearer. He will 
plant his standard in the face of onrushing 
floods; he will stem the tide and be the 
shadow of a great rock in the heat, a 
shelter in the time of storm. 

Convince people of such support and 
companionship, and you take much of the 
weight from the burdens they bear. When 
David saw his enemies assemble in bold 
array he trembled; but when an hour later 
he went to the sanctuary and found God 
awaiting him, he cried with sheer joy: 
“I will not be afraid for ten thousands of 
people, that rise up against me round about; 
for thou, 0 Lord, art a shield unto me; my 
glory, and the lifter up of mine head.” 

He will give us visions to stimulate con¬ 
fidence and arouse battalions of strength. 
To Dr. Samuel Johnson, who sits weeping 
over his mother, he gives “Rasselas.” To 
John Bunyan, as he languishes in Bedford 
jail, he gives a vision that makes him 
immortal. To Paul in the storm-tossed ship 
comes the angel of his presence; and Paul 
knows that One is with him greater than 


CHRIST THE BURDEN BEARER 167 


thunder, rain, lightning; aye, greater than 
all cosmic forces combined. The reins of 
life are in God’s hands, and man, whom 
he bears on his heart, is safe. 

But a greater truth still awaits the heart. 
That God knows us so thoroughly that 
nothing can surprise him is a sublime 
truth. We can scarcely hope for a greater 
or better; but here it is: God in Christ 
is under our burdens. His glorious omnip¬ 
otence rubs shoulder with us in the affairs 
of life. His sovereign presence supplements 
our weakness. So thoroughly is he identi¬ 
fied with us that what seemed to crush us 
becomes a means of grace, an opportunity 
for his divine life to fill us with its infinite 
resourcefulness. 

When F. B. Morse, the inventor, was 
asked the secret of his success, and people 
wondered at his calm and magnanimous 
deportment in times of trial and opposition, 
he said, “I have had a Friend.” His 
Friend was the great Burden Bearer of 
the world. He got over the hard places 
because he had Jesus Christ. His Friend 
was so strong and buoyant, sympathetic 
and all-sufficing, that it was a genuine 


168 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


pleasure to scale the Hill Difficulty. The 
burden was shared, and therefore light. 
It was not lifted from the back; it was 
lightened by another coming under it. 

Just so is it with us when Jesus Christ 
exercises his Lordship in our lives. Not 
all burdens are cast off; but we gain a 
Friend to bear what remain. Some are 
eliminated. Fearfulness is one of them. 
Fearfulness is that depression of heart which 
the soul feels when it thinks itself cut 
aloof from God. That feeling is dissipated 
when we remember Jesus Christ is in the 
yoke with us, and has placed at our dis¬ 
posal all he has and is. Fear subsides, 
the fevered pulse drops, and the heart 
ceases its ache. We no longer walk like 
abandoned castaways, but like sons of 
God basking in Eternal Goodness. 

Another burden eliminated is perplexity. 
Perplexity is a burden of the head, as fear 
is of the heart. Perplexity is shortsighted¬ 
ness run riot. It is mental confusion and 
groping in the dark. That, too, disap¬ 
pears when the Light of the World steps 
within the circle of our life. He lightens 
up all who come unto him and appointeth 


CHRIST THE BURDEN BEARER 169 


all their paths. “If I stoop,” says 
Browning, 

“Into a dark, tremendous sea of cloud, 

It is but for a time; I press God’s lamp 
Close to my breast: its splendor, soon or late, 
Will pierce the gloom: I shall emerge one day.” 

Then there is the burden of possible 
dissolution. Death is a lion in the way 
which all of us fear at some time. We 
evade the issue, shun the subject, and 
cast it from us. But even that fear has 
to go. Recall for a moment the death 
scene described in “St. Cuthbert’s.” Elsie 
McPhatter is dying, but not alone in her 
final battle. At two o’clock at night the 
minister’s bell rang. He answered it, for 
he knew the waters were rising around poor 
Elsie and he was needed at the helm. 
He started through the frosty night; the 
snow creaked under his feet and the air 
was dark and cold. Far out in the dis¬ 
tance he saw a solitary light. He looked 
at it for a moment and then said, “There 
is the battlefield of the world.” When he 
came into the room, where fear and trem¬ 
bling prevailed in the attendants, he prayed, 


170 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


“They shall see His face, and his name 
shall be written on their foreheads.” Then 
the fevered sufferer said: “It is bright and 
blithesome where I walk. The way is 
full of light and beauty.” 

And so it was—the Burden Bearer was 
there. He knows the light that burns in 
the darkness, and if it may guide a poor 
parish minister to the side of suffering, 
surely he himself will find the spot. And 
when he comes he takes the burden and 
puts it on his back; and going down the 
valley of the shadow, his rod and staff 
comfort us. 

He gives us rest. “Come unto me, all 
ye that labor and are heavy laden, and 
I will give you rest.” Rest! Rest! How 
inspiring is the sound to our weary hearts! 
How sublime the experience of it! Christ 
gives us so much of himself; he devotes 
himself so truly to us that the storm and 
the fever of life subside and leave us only 
his marvelous peace. It is what he prom¬ 
ised; and he never fails to discharge his 
covenants. Yes, he serves us so comfort¬ 
ingly that we are half glad that a burden 
is on the back. 


CHRIST THE BURDEN BEARER 171 


Jesus tranquilizes us—he rests us—be¬ 
cause he inspires our hearts with confidence, 
courage, faith. His companionship in the 
yoke of trial is an antidote for worry, 
fear, weakness. If we have him, it matters 
not what the circumstance is that harasses 
us, we are pacified by his calm and trium¬ 
phant mien. Unconsciously we imbibe his 
spirit, and are unafraid. His great soul 
electrifies us and the marvelous energies 
that move his soul quicken our own. 
Something of his soul passion possesses us, 
so that whatever betide, like Paracelsus, 
in Browning’s great epic, each of us can say: 

I go to prove my soul! 

I see my way as birds their trackless way. 

I shall arrive! What time, what circuit first, 

I ask not: But unless God send his hail 
Or blinding fireballs, sleet or stifling snow. 

In some time, his good time, I shall arrive: 

He guides me and the bird. 

Jesus Christ rests us, because he assures 
us that whatever the burden or load may 
be which we carry we are pulled in the 
direction of home. Somewhere up the road 
is the last turn which leads there. The 
City of Destiny lies beyond the Hill 


172 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


Difficulty, and we shall see its sunlit spires 
flashing through the circling clouds! I 
know this is so because Christ never joins 
us in the yoke of toil or trial except to 
pull us that way. To go with him is to 
journey surely and unerringly toward the 
Father’s house; and so the pathway of 
trial leads to the precincts of peace. 

If I still hold closely to him, 

What hath he at last? 

Sorrow vanquished, labor ended, 

Jordan passed. 


JESUS CHRIST AND THE LESSON 
OF SOLITUDE 





CHAPTER XI 

JESUS CHRIST AND THE LESSON 
OF SOLITUDE 

There is an exuberance to Jesus Christ 
which is at once the admiration and am¬ 
bition of man. Weariness and fatigue are 
almost entirely absent in his life, and he 
moves among people with inspiring poise 
and buoyancy. He is bright and vivacious, 
pungent and profound, and his words flow 
with the cadence of music and scintillate 
with the brightness of light. Though he 
is constantly enriching others, he is never 
poor; active in covering the sore spots of 
the world, he is not contaminated; per¬ 
sistent in teaching great truths and healing 
the sick, he is not dull nor disappointing. 
As no other person he was engaged in 
bringing order out of moral and social 
confusion; but he himself is never distracted 
or discomposed. He knows what to do 
and does it with clear head, steady hand, 
warm heart. The throng is always pressing 

175 


176 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


him, but his strength is not drained. He 
had the rhythm and charm, the vigor and 
grace of a spring day, which emancipates 
latent energies in hill and field and makes 
the earth blossom as the garden of God. 

Jesus has been called the Man of Sorrows; 
but as truly was he the Man of Optimism 
and Cheer. He moved among the struggling 
masses and drew them to his heart by 
strength as well as sympathy, cheer as 
well as tears, heroism as well as patience. 
Though he bore the burdens of men, he 
ever walked with the quiet, triumphant 
tread of a king. Only once did he fall, 
and that was when he carried the cross 
for a sin-cursed world. Even then his 
spirit did not fail him. His body touched 
the ground, but his soul stood erect in its 
incomparable strength. Though all nature 
murmured at the crime, the sun was 
eclipsed, and the earth rocked with re¬ 
monstrance, Jesus was self-possessed until 
he bowed his head and said, “It is finished.” 

Solitude had much to do with the 
making of his life. He kept himself fresh 
by union with unfailing springs. He was 
in touch with God. He kept himself in 


THE LESSON OF SOLITUDE 177 


a state of conservation by communion. 
He was mighty in his outer life because 
he knew the rare art of isolating the inner 
life. His public life was one of power 
because his private life was one of prayer. 
The tides of his strength were never at 
ebb, because the great ocean behind him 
crowded him with a flood. It was possi¬ 
ble for him to be his best because in sol¬ 
itude he was energized by the God of 
Hosts. 

Jesus sought solitude because he wished 
to conserve a healthy relation between his 
resources and the use he made of them. 
Expenditure and income are mutually de¬ 
pendent upon each other. One cannot 
give out without taking in. The hand that 
lifts must itself be sustained. The breast 
which nurses the growing babe must be 
nourished by hidden springs. One cannot 
serve a lavish table on a meager pantry. 
Which is only another way of saying that 
the same principle holds in the larger 
relations of life. Christ realized the fact 
and disciplined himself accordingly. He 
knew the springs of life and visited them. 
Though he had compassion, he did not 


178 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


allow the crowd to separate him from the 
fountains that sustained him. When it 
could not be otherwise he sent them away 
that he might retire and recover poise, 
power, peace. The Gospels note the fact 
with ever-recurring regularity. 4 ‘He with¬ 
drew into the wilderness.” “Rising early 
in the morning, he departed into the desert 
to pray.” “He went into a mountain, 
and continued there all night in prayer 
to God.” Retirement was a habit of Jesus, 
and solitude was a discipline which he 
never neglected. He was not stranger to 
the great sources of existence and, there¬ 
fore, never depleted his strength. 

“The streams that move the mills of 
the world rise in solitary places,” says 
Emerson. That sounds new to some of 
us, but it was an old law with which 
Jesus was familiar and he never trans¬ 
gressed. In solitude he refreshed his soul 
and girded himself for the field of battle. 
In silence and isolation he kept his armor 
intact and himself in a state of health. 
In communion with God he renewed his 
spirit; and so it happened that his coun¬ 
tenance never lost its light, his words 


THE LESSON OF SOLITUDE 179 


their authority, his hands their deftness 
and healing power. 

There are times when we wonder at 
the lack of robustness in the religious life 
of to-day. Men and women do not scin¬ 
tillate. Their eyes are like the eyes which 
Marguerite Audaux describes in Marie 
Claire: “They do not shine at all. They 
make one think of a rainbow which has 
almost melted away.” Their glory has 
departed, because they have failed where 
Jesus succeeded. Their lives are not in 
touch with God and consequently their 
resources are in a state of depletion. They 
are in touch with the earth, and, with its 
dust, their strength crumbles away. 

Jesus, in the next place, realized that 
personality is the main asset in one’s life, 
and, therefore, one’s first duty is—to find 
the self. Solitude is essential not merely 
to find God but soul . 

Some things about ourselves we can dis¬ 
cover in society. How clever we are, or 
facetious, interesting, and resourceful, we 
can determine there. But the really great 
things about us, the terrible and sublime 
forces of mind, heart, will, are revealed 


180 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


only in those deep moments when, detached 
from the world, we see ourselves in the 
calm white light of God’s presence. 

It is said of Jenny Lind that one day 
as she was rehearsing for a reception she 
suddenly saw the sacredness of the gift 
God had so graciously bestowed upon her. 
The discovery came with the thrill and 
thrall of revelation, and moved her to tears. 
She saw God in herself. There in the soli¬ 
tude of her studio, the doors being shut, 
she saw herself. And from that moment 
on there was a new element of power in 
her music—a subtile, ethereal quality that 
swayed her audiences like leaves in the 
mellow breeze of autumn. 

Abraham Lincoln, of tender memory, was 
a son of solitude. In the primeval forests 
and fields of Indiana, among the pines 
and hemlocks, and beside the watercourses, 
he became acquainted with humanity and 
God. There, in the presence of over¬ 
brooding divinity, Columbuslike, he dis¬ 
covered also himself. So was it with Jesus. 
In solitude, in the presence of God, he 
saw himself and became conscious of his 
mission. There he became aware of those 


THE LESSON OF SOLITUDE 181 


priceless faculties of his nature which never 
knew impoverishment nor defeat. 

We have seen the same miracle under 
our very eyes. Here is a painter who for 
years goes on doing mediocre work; or 
here is a musician who produces ordinary 
songs; or a poet who lives on bread and 
water because his verses can earn him 
no more. Suddenly these men come under 
the influence of overshadowing love. Love 
finds them. They look into the face of 
love and become aware of themselves. 
The paintings of the artist now do all 
but breathe and walk; the virtuoso’s music 
pulsates with emotion and passion; and 
the poet’s verses abound with charm and 
grace. Love discovers and crowns them. 

Now, Jesus was loved. He was loved 
by the multitude, by little children, and 
by his kin. Their affection meant much 
to him and inspired him to generous deeds; 
but the love that found him and made 
him w r as the love he felt in solitude with 
God. That love discovered him and made 
him conscious of his life work. Not until 
he rested his head on the bosom of the 
Father did he know himself to be the 


182 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


Eternal Son who came forth to mingle 
with and walk among men and women in 
soul-redeeming ministry. 

Deep down in our lives are emotions, 
sentiments, buried dreams, songs, pictures, 
sermons that only God can evoke and 
bring into expression. Not until we get 
away from our dependence upon men and 
machines, and in solitude look to God, will 
they ever come to conscious life and power. 
When we see ourselves as God does we are 
henceforth among the elect. He who finds 
himself has also found his destiny and goal. 
If chosen men had never been alone, 

In deep mid-silence open-doored to God, 

No greatness ever had been dreamed or done. 

Jesus apprehended that solitude is essen¬ 
tial as a shield against worldliness. 

Man’s great peril is worldliness. It is 
the thing which gets into his life and works 
endless mischief and wrong. But in sol¬ 
itude, alone with the God of one’s being, 
a man finds it hard to yield to or com¬ 
promise with the world. The conscience 
is never more sensitive than in the hour of 
communion, when right and wrong are 
seen in the light of God’s holiness. Nor 


THE LESSON OF SOLITUDE 183 


is the imagination ever more lofty and 
discerning than in the hour of prayer; nor 
the will so irresistible as when in solitude 
it gets its cue for action from God. Sol¬ 
itude is, therefore, essential to moral, 
social, and religious health. Solitude is 
the means of making us proof against 
infection by causing us to be spiritually 
minded. Therefore none of us are safe 
unless we bolt the door between the world 
and ourselves and open our lives to that 
presence which filleth all in all. 

Take for example the matter of com¬ 
promise, at which I have hinted. How 
terrible and ubiquitous is the temptation! 
Jesus was asked to compromise; but he 
fortified himself against it by prayer and 
fasting. Lincoln was asked to compromise. 
He was told that he could never be elected 
President if he persisted in advocating cer¬ 
tain national policies for which he stood. 
But he stood by the final decree of his 
conscience. Washington was asked to com¬ 
promise. They were driven and lashed by 
abuse and criticism because they refused. 
They knew they had to live with them¬ 
selves, and that would be impossible if 


184 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


they betrayed the deeper voices of the 
soul. 

The temptation makes its appeal to us 
in many and subtile forms. It comes to 
us in easy-going maxims, which are ad¬ 
mitted as quite conventional and conve¬ 
nient. Here is one of them: “When in Rome 
do as the Romans do.” Here is another: 
“What everybody does must be right.” 
Still another runs like this: “Stolen pleasures 
are the sweetest.” How often we have these 
words cast at us, and it never occurs that they 
are the slogans of license and lawlessness! 
We have to think twice before we see their 
peril, and are not aware of the fact that com¬ 
pliance with them is giving the world foot¬ 
hold on the most sacred soil of the soul. 

Against all such dangers Jesus Christ 
secured himself. He fortified himself in 
secret places by cultivating God’s presence. 
He made himself aware of God’s purpose 
and then consecrated himself to it. He 
communed with his awe-inspiring and soul- 
satisfying presence. He lived an incom¬ 
parable life because in solitary places he 
immersed himself in the triumphantly spir¬ 
itual streams that flow out of Zion. 


JESUS CHRIST’S SPIRITUAL 
SUPREMACY 







CHAPTER XII 

JESUS CHRIST’S SPIRITUAL SUPREMACY 
The career of Jesus Christ is an inex¬ 
haustible treasury of inspiration which 
ministers to every need and mood of man. 
If one goes to it with the purpose of en¬ 
riching the mind, it supplies the most 
stimulating philosophy of life; or the heart, 
it opens reservoirs of infinite love; or the 
will, it promises and permits alliance with 
Omnipotence. In Jesus Christ the weary 
are rested, the fearful calmed, the sinful 
forgiven, the heavy laden strengthened in 
God. In him every fundamental necessity 
of man’s various nature is met and supplied. 

The magnitude of Jesus’ influence is 
incalculable, and grows upon us in the 
contemplation of it. Here is a man whose 
personal bearing and conduct, confidence 
and calm, vision and insight, patience and 
strength were a constant source of sur¬ 
prise. The affluence of his resources and 
the generosity with which he disbursed 
187 


188 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


them; the buoyancy of his manhood and 
the democratic method of making himself 
felt; the magnanimity of his heart and the 
patience he exercised toward his fellow men 
were the table talk of the time. So earnest, 
gracious, and sincere were these prandial 
reflections of the people that little children, 
as well as grown up men and women, 
learned to know and love him. He was 
the idol of a few, the hero of some, and 
the Messiah of a host. 

When Jesus looked at an audience it 
was the most natural thing in the world 
for his hearers to assert and magnify his 
authority and superiority. There was some¬ 
thing so contagious and convincing about 
him that even his enemies had to admit 
his mastery and leadership. He under¬ 
stood people, and they knew it. He was 
kin to their most secret emotions and 
aspirations, and needed only to open his 
lips to ignite the attention of friends and 
foe alike. As leaves turn to the rising 
sun, so the souls of men and women re¬ 
sponded to the charm and simplicity, vigor 
and virility of his matchless life. He made 
no claim but the crowd justified it. He 


CHRIST’S SPIRITUAL SUPREMACY 189 


might be unconventional in his method 
of doing things, but the throng that dogged 
his steps defended him. They insisted that 
no man ever spake as he, or brought such 
solace, scope, and peace to man. He fed 
the hungry, healed the sick, raised the 
dead. Men and women with worn-out, 
jaded, sin-cursed lives stepped within the 
circle of his influence and were regenerated 
and renewed. Peasants and Pharisees lis¬ 
tened to his talk about birds, flowers, 
fruit, and, in spite of themselves, were led 
to think of God. He walked by the side 
of the wayfaring, and their hearts grew 
warm with a sense of the divine. It was 
a way that Jesus had. People looked at 
him and became conscious of God. His 
noble, manly face brought the Infinite very 
near their hearts and luminously present in 
the field of the consciousness. To many 
of them he was the image of the eternal 
God, full of grace and truth. 

Jesus exercised the same power over 
nature. As he was king of men’s lives, 
so also was he sovereign in the power he 
wielded over the cosmic world, with its 
mysterious laws and forces. He had a 


190 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


hold on nature and its secrets that never 
failed nor deceived him. In the midst of 
the most elemental and titanic phenomena 
he walked unabashed and unafraid. He 
lived in the universe with the perfect 
freedom that a man occupies a house. 
In it he was secure and sovereign. 

Just that is the impression we gain of 
Jesus when we view his calm and poise 
and eloquent abandon in the storm-tossed 
ship, when he rebuked the winds and the 
sea, and there was a great calm. We 
feel that we are in the presence of one 
who not only rules the spirit of man, 
but is also perfect master of the environ¬ 
ment in which that spirit is disciplined 
and matured. He holds in his grip the 
reins of the physical universe and towers 
above it in his mastery and control. He 
is the Lord of life, majestic in his knowl¬ 
edge of it, and sovereign in its operation. 

That we can believe through the partial 
mastery of man over matter. Jesus Christ’s 
leadership we can concede by virtue of 
what we are in relation *to the material 
universe. What that relation is hardly 
needs elucidation: man’s superiority is a 


CHRIST’S SPIRITUAL SUPREMACY 191 


universally acknowledged fact. Mind con¬ 
quers the most formidable obstacles and 
does not hesitate before the so-called im¬ 
possible. Wherever man steps on the 
scene of conflict, he does so to conquer. 
What he believes he can do he does. He 
overrides opposition however extensive and 
obstinate. The mountain which encumbers 
his path he tunnels; the electricity which 
burns his barns and splinters his trees he 
tames, and, as if in revenge, makes it do 
his work. The inexhaustible energy of the 
earth he converts into engines of progress; 
and so complete is his mastery that civili¬ 
zation must ever be recognized as man’s 
victory over the opposition and severity of 
the cosmic world. 

But what is more grandiose still is 
witnessed in the reach of man when he 
combats the things of space and spirit. 
He explores space and brings forth its 
game of stars, planets, moons, and suns. 
He makes the imponderable air carry his 
messages, and extracts from ether the power 
that drives his mills, lights and heats his 
homes. In physiology he numbers and 
names the bones and muscles, organs and 


192 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


functions of the body. In chemistry he 
goes deeper and resolves them into their 
constituent elements. In psychology he 
maps out the departments of the mind. 
In biology he traces life through aeons of 
struggle to its primal source. In geology 
he records the environment in which life 
was developed. In theology he familiarizes 
himself with the soul and God. These, 
and many others, are the various achieve¬ 
ments of man by which his superiority and 
excellence are attested and justified. 

We can, therefore, believe in the suprem¬ 
acy of Christ. His greater glory is an¬ 
ticipated by our nature. Because of the 
secrets we can disclose, we cannot doubt 
his ability to go farther and deeper. Be¬ 
cause of our achievements, we cannot ques¬ 
tion his. Because we can forestall the 
ravages of disease, we are sure he can 
vanquish death. Because we can use the 
tides to our advantage, we believe he can 
still the sea. The exercise of such suprem¬ 
acy is entirely consonant with such a life 
as he lived. One would be disappointed not 
to find it there. Such life and such power 
belong together—supplement each other. 


CHRIST’S SPIRITUAL SUPREMACY 193 


Then, too, we can believe the sov¬ 
ereignty of Christ over nature, because of 
certain evident instincts that prophesy such 
mastery as Jesus exercised. Large as the 
world is, we feel cramped in it. There 
is about us an element of life which de¬ 
cidedly declares that the body is a cell 
and the earth a prison for the undying 
soul. The soul is in bondage and craves 
just such supremacy as Jesus Christ’s. 
Greatness, superior greatness, is an in¬ 
stinct of life, and so manifest that we 
are restless for the coming of a more 
perfect day, when the dream of Phillips 
Brooks, who speaks for us all, may be 
realized: 

O, for a wider life where flower 

With more of breath gains more of bloom; 

With more of peace since more of power. 

And more of rest since more of room. 

The world was “roomy” for Jesus’ soul 
because he had in himself the sovereign 
life that could control and rule. The 
waves and winds obeyed because Omnip¬ 
otence filled his heart. He could command 
attention and challenge allegiance and sue- 


194 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


ceed in every exigency because he was the 
incomparable Son of the living God. 

So we look at the incident on the lake 
again and learn that Jesus Christ’s su¬ 
premacy contemplates beneficent ends. He 
speaks the word and saves the boat, be¬ 
cause in its shell are the hope and salva¬ 
tion of the world. He uses his great 
power for moral ends. He commands the 
waves for the sake of humanity, which 
he came to save. In mercy he rebukes 
the wind, that his power may save those 
who have sinned. He rules nature that 
he may perfect humanity. 

“Why, then,” some one asks, “is the 
storm permitted? Does God delight in the 
anguish, fear, and weakness of man? Why 
are flood and earthquake and tidal-waves 
of ruin?” 

These phenomena are permitted for the 
same reason that some seasons are cold 
and ruthless, and others warm and balmy; 
for the same reason that a hill is hard 
to climb, sickness painful, sin ruinous, and 
death desolating. They are permitted for 
moral and religious ends: that man may 
become aware of himself, his social need 


CHRIST’S SPIRITUAL SUPREMACY 195 


and spiritual destiny. The boat is lashed 
by storm because the disciples have some¬ 
thing deep and profound to learn. Paris 
is harassed by flood, because gay, fashion¬ 
able, world-loving Paris needs to see itself 
in the light of a great and enduring moral 
destiny. Great and beautiful as it is, 
San Francisco needs the inscrutable dark¬ 
ness that follows in the wake of the earth¬ 
quake and grim death, that the god of 
gold may be superseded by the God of 
spirit, social purity, and moral righteous¬ 
ness. Messina falls into ruins that the 
great heart of brotherhood may be un¬ 
loosed and the saving strength of charity 
and religion may be bared. Suffering is 
the highway to self-discovery and God. 

We must never forget that behind life 
and its hardships, in the midst of social 
wreck and ruin, is mercy. Beneficence is 
there, but behind the cloud. Good-will 
and love are there. At the stinging end 
of the whipping wind is—God. In danger 
and disaster, when the wheels of com¬ 
merce stop to heed, are felt the pulse of 
humanity. Lives must be thrown down 
that, in dust and ashes, they may dis- 


196 THE IN COMPARABLE CHRIST 


cover soul. Mercy must chastise that, in 
pain and regret, man may abrogate the 
things that precipitate punishment. The 
eagle stirs the nest that the fledglings 
may find their wings and be the monarchs 
of the air. The nest is fouled that the 
royal blood of the bird may protest and 
leap forth to fulfill its destiny. 

Just so is it in life. We ponder its 
hard facts; see its famine-stricken areas; 
feel its earthquakes; hear the roar of 
storm and flood; but are not disturbed. 
The Potter is at the wheel, and knows 
what he has designed. The Refiner is at 
the pot and knows when the liquid iron 
is ready for the mold. God is not indif¬ 
ferent to his purpose, but knows and cares. 
He is present every moment, and the 
elements are plastic in his hands. Regret 
and shame there will be none when his 
work is done and all his purposes are 
realized forever. 


THE CROSS THE SPIRITUAL 
MAGNET OF THE WORLD 





CHAPTER XIII 

THE CROSS THE SPIRITUAL MAGNET OF 
THE WORLD 

The cross of Jesus Christ is the spiritual 
magnet of the world and is drawing to 
itself all mankind. It is the center of the 
world’s thought and idealism, hope and 
aspiration, life and culture. When Jesus 
was crucified on Calvary, his influence 
was local and provincial, but to-day his 
name is revered in every village, hamlet, 
province, state, and nation. There are 
few thrones on which he does not sit, 
and the hearts in which he reigns are an 
exceedingly great multitude. The influence 
of his cross is as widely distributed as 
gravitation, which draws all things to a 
common center. 

Wherein, then, lies the marvelous and 
irresistible power of the cross? How has 
this instrument of cruelty and death be¬ 
come the symbol of love and life? 

It is a commonplace that the contem¬ 
poraries of Jesus in the Roman state viewed 

199 


200 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


the cross with horror. They declared it 
to be ignominy incarnated. It was the 
hope of every Roman that none of his 
fellow citizens should ever be executed by 
it. As we think of the gallows, or electric 
chair, or guillotine, so was the cross re¬ 
garded then. It was the object of fear, 
derision, contempt. But as such it is no 
longer regarded. The ignominy, shame, 
dishonor which it symbolized in ancient 
times are foreign to our minds and dis¬ 
tress us not. In the course of the cen¬ 
turies a miracle has been wrought and an 
undoubted transformation has occurred. 
To-day the cross is held in reverence and 
miniature copies of it in gold, silver, and 
wood adorn the bodies of the living and 
the dead. It is enpinnacled in the sky 
and chiseled into the altars of the sanctuary. 
Around the cross we weave the tendrils of 
our love and with sheer joy and unbounded 
gratitude sing its praise. 

In the cross of Christ I glory, 

Towering o’er the wrecks of time; 

All the light of sacred story 

Gathers round its head sublime. 

The cross has this all-subduing and mag- 


THE SPIRITUAL MAGNET 201 


netic power, because it gives dramatic 
expression to eternal love. In the tran¬ 
scendent sacrifice of Jesus the love of God 
is unbosomed and revealed. 

This is all the more remarkable when 
we recall what he was in his earthly life. 
Here was a person who had complete mas¬ 
tery of himself and his spiritual resources, 
and knew how to use them for his per¬ 
sonal safety and well-being. From what he 
achieved in other relations we have grounds 
for believing that Jesus commanded power 
which could have crushed his enemies and 
the cross they had made for his destruc¬ 
tion. Jesus lived in the assurance that all 
things were given into his hands and that 
he could neither fail nor fall. It was, 
therefore, possible for him to circumvent 
those who sought and planned his ruin. 
But he did not so use his power. He 
walked straight toward Golgotha, and “as 
a lamb before her shearers is dumb, so he 
opened not his mouth.” He accepted the 
various grades of humiliation and sacrifice, 
until the ancient glory which he had with 
the Father was shrouded in death. He 
allowed his enemies to nail him to the 


202 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


cross; he made his death with malefactors 
and was put away as a common criminal. 
And what has happened? Ever since the 
hour in which he bowed his head and 
said, “It is finished,” that darkest of all 
tragedies has inspired the conviction that 
on Calvary eternal love stooped to the 
lowest level in order to heal the broken in 
heart and wash away the sin of the world. 

It is very strange that love never seems 
very real to us until we have seen it in 
some dramatic and tragic experience. Per¬ 
haps there is a kindly providence in the 
ancient experience of human love, the 
course of which is not always smooth. The 
way is rough and thorny, and the goal 
desired often long hidden behind impen¬ 
etrable thickets and seemingly insurmount¬ 
able cliffs. But in those hours of yearning 
and suspense when the heartstrings are taut, 
if not torn, love comes to its supreme 
rewards. Only after it has passed through 
a gauntlet of treachery, trickery, plotting, 
and jealousy does it rise before us “passing 
strange, deep and unforgettable.” When it 
suffers love is seen in its divinest feature. 

So it comes to pass that we look at 


THE SPIRITUAL MAGNET 203 


Calvary, as it stands back there in the 
shadows of antiquity, with its somber 
setting of darkened heavens, surging mobs, 
tremulous earthquakes, and are amazed and 
deeply moved. Whittier expressed himself 
none too feelingly when he sang: 

Well may the cavern-depths of Earth 
Be shaken, and her mountains nod; 

Well may the sheeted dead come forth 
To gaze upon a suffering God! 

Well may the temple shrine grow dim, 

And shadows veil the cherubim. 

When he, the chosen one of heaven, 

A sacrifice for guilt is given! 

Sacrifice, pain, death, make things real 
to us. They plow right through the super¬ 
ficialities of existence and show us the 
essence of things. It is often so in domestic 
relations. We come to know mother’s love 
not by the hundred gentle ministries that 
fill the day, but by the chance discovery 
of seeing her in tears. When we hear her 
sob in the solitude of her room, or pray 
with trembling lips—suddenly we see love 
in all its deep, mellow, and grateful fullness. 
Sorrow does not make love more beautiful 


204 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


to us; but it reveals its strength. In the 
tears of silent sorrow, we discover love’s 
heart, and remember with chastened mean¬ 
ing its embraces and endearing ministries. 
Everywhere it is the cross that unlocks 
life’s deepest realities. The heart that 
bleeds reveals the heart that loves. 

It is true in economic and political life. 
It may be that a people, in the course of 
years, may get away from the great ideals 
that stirred and strengthened their fathers. 
They are not half so vigilant, patriotic, un¬ 
selfish, and sincere. Compromise and con¬ 
cession play a large part in their public 
life. There are fewer great convictions to 
move and warm their hearts, and conse¬ 
quently they are more self-complacent and 
unimpassioned. But the moment a great 
man falls, as Lincoln fell, while waging 
war with the forces of evil, the heart 
mellows and warms up. The sacrifice of 
one great heart rekindles the altar-fires of 
ten million homes. The old fires of past 
years of sacrifice flare up and burn again. 
By the fall of one, ten legions rise to 
move in their might. 

All people are proud of their national 


THE SPIRITUAL MAGNET 205 


colors. They do well to rise and salute 
them when brought in their midst. But 
the flags that mean most are those which 
passed through storms of fire and hail; 
that fell to the* ground in the heat of 
battle; were drenched in blood and trampled 
under foot, but lifted again and again 
until at length the shout of victory passed 
over the battle line and drowned the 
groans of the wounded and dying. Those 
are the flags—old, tattered, torn—that mag¬ 
netize us and move us as with a southern 
gale of passion. They signify national 
greatness, patriotism, renown. They, they 
are the price of blood, and as such sym¬ 
bolize the unalloyed and incomparable 
virtues of a nation’s life. 

It is so with the cross of Jesus. As a 
man, his life is unexcelled for goodness. 
As a teacher, he said many things which 
fall upon our ears with the touch, tender¬ 
ness, and refreshing of twilight clover-laden 
breezes. As a prophet he will never be 
excelled for insight and vision, leadership 
and renown; but the thing that draws us 
to him, humbles and subdues us, is his 
death. When we see him die we kneel in 


206 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


awe and tears: and in the moments of 
chastened vision which follow know that 
he was none other than the Son of God who 
came to take away the sin of the world. 

It is said of a great philosopher that he 
lamented his “fading faith.” It troubled 
him at times that he could no longer be¬ 
lieve as others. He asked many startling 
questions, and with his saberlike intellect 
cut the stem of many traditions; but, 
though he was esteemed for his brilliancy 
and erudition, he was unhappy and dis¬ 
consolate. One day, however, he stopped 
philosophizing. He asked no more ques¬ 
tions. He approached the cross and in 
patient reverence stood and looked at it 
until its great significance soaked his being. 
“Surely,” said he, “here is a mystery 
transcends all. The simple believer is 
right when he affirms that here died the 
Son of God. It must be so, for my own 
nature thunders he lived as such .” 

That is a common experience. Much 
we cannot elucidate or fathom; there are 
depths in the nature of Christ we cannot 
sound; heights we cannot scale; mysteries 
we cannot penetrate; but the scourged. 


THE SPIRITUAL MAGNET 207 


mocked, crucified Jesus of Nazareth hang¬ 
ing there on Calvary’s dismal height hushes 
all misgiving, fear, and doubt. Before that 
awful tragedy we are dumb—we stand in 
the presence of the adorable God! 

The cross of Jesus is the great spiritual 
magnet of the world because it is the 
secret of human brotherhood. As people 
are drawn to the Christ they are drawn 
to each other. Old lines of demarcation 
are withdrawn, racial prejudices disarmed, 
personal animosities forgiven and forgotten. 
His suffering love melts the heart, so that 
the great mingle with the low, the rich 
with the poor, the strong with the weak, 
in soul-saving ministry. As we approach 
the cross we approach each other, for we 
are crowding a common center. With the 
cross of Jesus in the center of modern 
life, humanity moves from its farthest 
reaching circumference inwardly along the 
many radii of his influence and power. 
As we approach Christ, we touch and min¬ 
gle. China, Japan, India, Africa, Europe, 
America, as they approach the cross, are 
merged into a great state of brotherhood— 
one and inseparable. 


208 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


It is the pull of the magnet which is 
bringing the world together. It is the 
crucified Lord who is filling the earth with 
love, and if at length the world will be 
a solidarity and fraternity, where war will 
be no more, and the weapons and accou¬ 
terments of death will be converted into 
instruments of mercy and culture—to the 
cross of Christ belongs the credit. But if 
that era is still removed in the region of 
possibility, and only measurably realized, 
be it known to all men that it is due to 
human weakness and sin. There is virtue 
at the center, but we are not there, and 
its contagion does not sway us. We are too 
far removed from Calvary and its bleeding 
heart, from the cross and its ineffable com¬ 
passion, to leaven the world with fraternal 
feeling. Once we get there, and hold our¬ 
selves to it with fervor and faith, the na¬ 
tions of the earth will be one, even as Christ 
was one and indivisible in God. 

The cross is the great magnet of the 
world because it magnetizes all who come 
in contact with it. It does for man what 
a magnet does to the steel blade of a boy’s 
knife. As we approach the cross, some- 


THE SPIRITUAL MAGNET 209 

thing is communicated to us: its energies 
run over into us, so that we become filled 
with the fullness of Christ. As Jesus lived, 
we live. The thoughts he entertained we 
think; the purposes that were emotive and 
dynamic in his ministry become operative 
in us; and the ideals he cherished and ex¬ 
pressed become our aim and passion. His 
outlook and perspective determine and in¬ 
spire our vision. His benignant and benef¬ 
icent spirit moves over us and we, in our 
several places and occupations, become 
lesser magnets which are not unlike himself. 

It is said of Thackeray that once he 
was walking out the Dean Road to West 
Edinburgh, when a wooden crane of a 
quarry stood out on the horizon, and 
appeared in the dim light of the evening 
as a cross. Turning to his companions 
he said, “There is Calvary.” A season 
of silence followed, when the writer began 
to talk of things divine, and gently led 
his friends to the contemplation of God. 
Calvary transfixed him—magnetized him. 

So the cross gives us new motives and 
ideals, new aspirations and occupations. 
It unlocks the purses of the rich, and they 


210 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


minister graciously and generously to the 
poor. It magnetizes the strong, and they 
go forth into desert places to nurse the 
sick and dying. It gives direction to in¬ 
tellect and heart, and the poetry and 
music of the world are saturated with 
strange and incredible consecration. It fills 
the pews of the churches and the little 
chapels of the world with the aroma of 
sacrifice. It magnetizes society with the 
galvanism of brotherhood, and the king¬ 
dom of God is ushered in with all its 
mysterious optimism and beneficence. 

Some of us are not enjoying life because 
no great motives control us. Life is 
insipid because our ideals and aims are 
unworthily small. We live; but do not 
move to the rhythm of any great motif. 
We are like the youth at the piano, who 
has been given a new sheet of music, 
which he finds uninteresting and dull. 
Nothing in it appeals to him or arouses 
his enthusiasm. Possibly the teacher failed 
to show him, or else could not do so, its 
beauty and symbolism. The composition, 
in consequence, is but a jumble of notes, 
incoherently strung together, and has no 


THE SPIRITUAL MAGNET 211 


musical value to the lad. It is not music 
at all, until an older and wiser head gets 
down by the side of the youth and by 
degrees brings out motif and theme. When 
the dream of the composer is expressed, 
the jargon of sound is converted into 
music. As the composition becomes intel¬ 
ligible, the fingers begin to move, the 
heart wakes, and the music has begun. 

The cross of Jesus exercises this magic 
on the soul. In it and in him we get 
the motif of things. In him we catch 
the meaning of this motley existence of 
which we are part and parcel. We see 
what are wrought and intended. We get 
the purpose of God and by degrees see 
the beauty of the composer’s intent. From 
that hour on, life gains inspiration and 
scope. Then we begin to live. 

Such is the marvelous power of the 
cross. “It,” said Henry Drummond in 
his last hours, “transcends all.” Nothing 
surpasses it, save Jesus only. We can 
talk about it; theorize about it; but there 
it is on Golgotha hill—incomparable in 
its solitude and sympathy—drawing human¬ 
ity to righteousness, life, God. 



JESUS CHRIST’S ENRICHMENT OF 
LIFE 








CHAPTER XIV 

JESUS CHRIST’S ENRICHMENT OF LIFE 
Twenty centuries ago it was said of 
Jesus that a multitude sought to touch 
him. Sufficient time, therefore, has passed 
to give the world opportunity to discredit 
him; of which, however, there is no danger. 
He is still the Incomparable One and the 
multitude is thronging him yet. He is 
the one Person humanity cannot let alone 
nor forget. Virtue goes out of him. He 
has the secret of life and is its fulfillment. 
He is humanity’s hope, inspiration, and 
goal. 

We will be drawn nearer to him in 
devotion and service, in life and scholar¬ 
ship, by observing some of the things he 
has done for us and the world. They 
are many and would fill volumes. There 
is scarcely a single point in our ramified 
life which he has not touched. The truth 
is, civilization is a commentary on Jesus 
Christ, so that it is quite difficult to ascer- 

215 


216 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


tain what elements in his ministry should 
be emphasized most. Our perplexity is 
like to that of a man who has been ushered 
into a vast lapidary’s room where he is 
invited to select three or four precious 
stones for himself, and every one is so 
brilliant and precious that choice is next 
to impossible. Yet as we look at Jesus 
Christ and the crowd to which he min¬ 
istered, listen to his teaching and note his 
influence, three great ideas gain prominence. 
In the horizon of thought they stand out 
in picturesque beauty, like the rocky cliffs 
of Maine on the coast line of the Atlantic. 

Here is one of them: Jesus Christ has 
a most remarkable way of making men 
and women feel at home in the world. 

That is affirming a great deal; for it 
is a common experience of thinking people 
to be overwhelmed by the magnitude and 
apparent enmity of the universe. I wonder 
sometimes what were the emotions of 
primitive man, when he was driven and 
lashed and tossed by the elements; when 
he heard the thunder roll and saw the 
lightning flash, felt the earthquake, and 
witnessed great volcanoes disgorge volumes 


CHRIST’S ENRICHMENT OF LIFE 217 


of smoke, vapor, and fire. Just what were 
his feelings as he looked into the abysmal 
deeps of space, at the stars, and without 
warning saw a comet swing into view and 
out of it, or the moon go into eclipse, or 
a meteor flash and sweep across the horizon 
and disappear in the void? Those feelings 
we can only partly surmise; but they were 
not unlike our own under similar circum¬ 
stances. Humanity changes little. The 
primal emotions of the heart and its 
elemental passions are the same yester¬ 
day, to-day, and forever. 

When we ponder the world, compare 
ourselves with its gigantic forces and trag¬ 
edies, we are deeply moved with wonder. 
Whence are these infinite spaces and whither 
do they extend? When will the spring of 
things have run down? Will this grandiose 
display of power be lost in the abysm of 
oblivion? Will there be a terrible collapse 
of these vast areas? Perhaps a fatal blow 
will be struck some day, when the earth 
in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, 
will be no more than a heap of wreck and 
ruin, a flaming star gradually consuming 
its own fuel, and then lost forever! 


218 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


Such have been the queries and senti¬ 
ments of man in all ages. You have 
entertained them; so have I. In common 
with men and women of every clime and 
creed, we have felt their significance. The 
world is ever tremulous with the thought 
of them and never ceases its questioning. 
It was so when Jesus came. Men and 
women were asking, “O God, if thou art 
there; if thou art behind the veil; if thou 
art present in life’s ceaseless movement— 
make thyself known. Declare thy purpose 
and calm our hearts.” To men and women 
thus concerned, Jesus came; and the sig¬ 
nificant thing about his life is, that they 
crowded around him like bees about a 
rosebush. He had a secret. It lit up 
his countenance and illumined his thought. 
Men came in contact with him and saw 
it at a glance. They could not avoid it, 
get over it, or away from it. There it 
was, bright as light, subtile as beauty, 
pervasive as air. He had the secret of 
the world. 

Jesus understood the crowd and knew 
what to do. With a single wave of his 
hand, with a single movement of his lips, 


CHRIST’S ENRICHMENT OF LIFE 219 


he inspired confidence, stimulated homely 
feeling, and encouraged repose. Just when 
he first said it and where, I do not know; 
but it may have been in the fields where 
the flowers were blooming and the birds 
were singing, and the sky was bright and 
cloudless, that he disclosed his secret. 
But this is what Jesus said, as he thought 
of the mystery of life, pondered its gigantic 
forces, and felt the compulsion of its laws: 
“My children, when these thoughts arise, 
say, ‘Father.’ ” 

Father! We have spoken that word a 
myriad times. We have spoken it in the 
calm of the evening; in the breezy morn¬ 
ing; in the gala day of fortune; in the 
night of adversity; but though we have 
spoken it so often, let us pronounce it 
again. It brings with it thrills of delight: 
it is the secret of Jesus and gives us all 
the feeling of Home. “Taught by Christ,” 
says Dr. Martineau, “we glance at the 
visible creation, once so awful, so full of 
forces rushing we know not whither, and 
involving us in their indomitable speed— 
and it becomes the mansion of God’s 
house, peaceful as a father’s abode; the 


220 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


sun that warms us in our domestic hearth; 
and the blue canopy that roofs us in with 
unspeakable protection.” 

The universe is nothing less than a 
palatial abiding place for God, and its 
myriad hearth fires, around which you and 
I congregate, are his temples, in which he 
meets us all. This is God’s world. He 
is at the heart of it, and, therefore, we are 
safe. 

In every age this message has inspired 
confidence and courage. It has changed 
the tone and temperature of the soul. I 
remember reading somewhere that the great 
Dr. Channing had his heart so imbued with 
this thought of God’s fatherhood that he 
welcomed the fiercest storms, liked to be 
in a ship when it rocked, because it gave 
him a new and vivid sensation of God’s 
solicitude and care. Clearly, also, do I 
remember a lad of seven who as yet had 
no one to abuse his mind by suggesting 
danger in the night; how one night I 
watched him leave the house to meet his 
father up the road. There was not a trace 
of fear—father was at the end of his 
little journey. But when he returned some 


CHRIST’S ENRICHMENT OF LIFE 221 

one inquired whether he had been afraid, 
and I can yet see the look of surprise on 
his face. But that suspicious question 
broke the spell. Like suspicions and super¬ 
stitions have distracted and disturbed the 
world. Jesus knew that to be so, and, 
therefore, taught men to believe that the 
Father is in the dark, as in the light; in 
the storm, in the rainbow, the earthquake, 
and the still small voice of calm. The 
air we breathe is deific, and nature’s self 
is invested with benevolence. 

I doubt not but this power of Jesus to 
bring the crowd under the spell of home¬ 
like feeling in the world, has had much to 
do with the progress of the world in the 
study and mastery of nature. Achieve¬ 
ments in science and mechanics owe their 
origin, not to the force of circumstance, 
but to the force of confidence . Faith, not 
necessity, is the mother of invention. The 
gigantic studies in astronomy, chemistry, 
mechanics, medicine, and music owe their 
first inspiration to the Man of Galilee, 
who looked into the face of nature and 
saw behind its picturesque beauty the 
pulsating image of the Father. He be- 


222 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


lieved that creation was God’s epic, and 
that it pleased the Father to have his 
children read his thoughts after him. 

Recall for a moment the reappearance of 
Halley’s comet. How it stimulated our 
faith in God’s world! You remember that 
before Halley’s time men were very much 
perplexed by the apparently erratic per¬ 
formances of comets. They were looked 
upon as gigantic anarchists in an other¬ 
wise orderly universe. But Sir Edmund 
Halley wrestled with the problem and 
discovered that every one of them was 
governed by law and that their move¬ 
ments, course, and speed could be cal¬ 
culated. In referring to a comet that 
appeared in 1682 he said it would return 
in seventy-six years. It was seen in 1758, 
sixteen years after his death. It was seen 
again in 1835; and yet again in 1911. 

How we welcomed it, and rejoiced at 
its coming! Though it was 3,400,000,000 
miles from the earth, and 10,000,000 miles 
in length, and had traveled trillions of 
miles, and was so gigantic that it defied 
imagination, we welcomed it, because the 
Father whom Jesus declared as his life’s 



CHRIST’S ENRICHMENT OF LIFE 223 


secret, ordered and controlled it. When 
we looked at it in the silent night and 
were filled with astonishment and adora¬ 
tion, we bowed our heads and said: 

God’s in his heaven; 

All’s well with the world. 

So, in the second place, Jesus Christ 
had a most fascinating and conclusive way 
of revealing to humanity the divinity of 
its nature. He got men and women to 
see what they never saw before with such 
clearness and certainty, that they were 
made in the similitude of the great Spirit 
who orders and controls the world. He 
made people feel at home in the world of 
space , and he also gave them the same 
feeling in the life of the spirit. 

That is even a greater achievement than 
the former. It is an achievement that lays 
hold of the roots of our being in such a 
way that, small and apparently insignif¬ 
icant that we are, we gain confidence, 
prowess, and power over the elements, the 
rolling seas, storm, and flood. Jesus Christ 
tells us we are the sons of God, and in¬ 
stinctively man responds to his words. 


224 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


stands erect, and proves it. Christ gives 
us a hint as to what we are, and the next 
moment the varied magnificence of our 
nature asserts its power and issues forth 
to conquer. 

There is a story told of a lad who, in 
troublous times, had been given in charge 
of a humble peasant for safe keeping. 
As he was heir to a great throne in Europe, 
the responsibility of the peasant was not 
a matter to be accepted lightly. 

One day it was necessary to chide the 
boy for wrongdoing; and his adopted sire 
said: “My boy, you are the son of a king; 
and some day you will be a great monarch. 
Live like a king’s son.” The youth’s na¬ 
ture responded to the call and challenge 
of the peasant. His royal nature answered 
with royal conduct. An appeal to his 
inherent kingliness prompted him to live 
like a prince. 

Such was the power of Jesus Christ. 
He informed the people that he met of 
their divinity . He said, “Ye are the sons 
of God,” and they in many instances 
responded by living in kingly fashion. We 
marvel how he does it, but cannot doubt 


CHRIST’S ENRICHMENT OF LIFE 225 


the result. Here is a woman, lost to love 
and purity, because the flesh is her ruling 
passion. He neither chides nor condemns. 
Though he saw the ruin and tragedy of 
her evil ways, the somber wretchedness of 
her lot, he appealed to the divine spark 
in the soul. By a chance word or glance 
he assured her that all was not lost. The 
soul is still burning, and he will fan it 
into a flame. He did. Before she could 
know what had happened, the divinity 
of her nature was seized and gripped and 
converted into a passion for righteousness. 

But this is but an incident taken out 
of an encyclopedia of similar experiences. 
The world is under the spell and magic 
of this Man. We are only beginning to 
see the tremendous influence of his per¬ 
sonality. “Jesus,” said Dr. Brierly, 4 ‘told 
people to believe in the great forces of 
their life. To some of them it was like 
telling them to fly.” But he was firm. 
He stood by his text. He held to his 
pronouncement; and so it happened that 
the next generation of life, and every 
succeeding one, has figured more prom¬ 
inently in the renewal and regeneration of 


226 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


the world. So his influence continues to 
the present. To-morrow or the next day, 
we will be awed and startled like the 
men and women on the Day of Pentecost. 
The royal blood of man will win at last, 
and the kingdom of kingly men and queenly 
women will be ushered in for all time. 

Jesus Christ has enriched life by bringing 
immortality to light. He lifts the veil 
of the present and the hereafter. With 
marvelous astuteness, clearness, precision, 
and enthusiasm, he showed the multitude 
that life was an unbroken and undimin¬ 
ished stream that swells in volume and 
momentum in its course until it passes 
into the eternal ocean. His entire ministry 
is pervaded with the thought of immor¬ 
tality, and his words are saturated with 
its spirit. So prominent was this in Christ 
that man felt the eternal in himself. For 
him the Messianic Age had come, and 
with it the ascendency of life over death. 

So we look back at the crowd again 
and inquire why they throng him so, 
break into his solitude, and disturb his 
peace. They are there for the same reason 
we are at his altar. He knows the secrets 


CHRIST’S ENRICHMENT OF LIFE m 


of the hereafter as well as of the present, 
and in both we are interested. We have 
all wondered and still wonder at the issue 
of things. We have stood with bowed 
head in the presence of sickness and death, 
and are familiar with the emotions that 
filled Tennyson’s heart when it bled for 
his friend: 

Thou wilt not leave us in the dust: 

Thou madest man. He knows not why. 

He thinks he was not made to die, 

And thou hast made him: Thou art just. 

That feeling is stronger now than ever. 
The more we achieve, the larger spheres 
we fill, the more our hearts thirst for 
immortality. Show a man this vast world, 
what is to be seen, felt and learned; re¬ 
veal to him the fact that he is able to 
take in this vast cosmos, trace its laws 
and utilize its forces, and the thought of 
extinction is intolerable! Extinction is the 
worst barbarism of all! To be lifted so 
high and dropped so low; to see so much 
and become so little at the end; to see 
God and end in dust: No! No! that is 
not the verdict of the soul! That anguish 


228 THE INCOMPARABLE CHRIST 


has gone from us forever, since Jesus 
lived. At every gathering of people for 
public worship we can sing and shout, 
“Sursam Corda”—“Lift up your hearts! 
Lift up your hearts!” There is nothing 
to fear and all to hope and gain. 

Therefore we can join the Saviour in 
the song he inspired in the immortal 
Browning: 

Grow old along with me! 

The best is yet to be; 

The last of life, for which the first was made. 

Our times are in His hands 

Who saith, “A whole I planned; 

Youth shows but half: trust God; see all, nor 
be afraid!” 









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